Alan: 10 of the 15 contiguous U.S. states that have legalized same-sex marriage are not only among"The Top 10" Catholic states (as a percentage of population): with few exceptions, they ARE "The Top 10" Catholic states.
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New Mexico Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
New Mexico, the only state without a law specifically allowing or prohibiting gay marriage, was barred by its supreme court from denying same-sex couples the right to marry.
New Mexico’s high court issued its decision today in response to a request by county clerks to clarify their obligations after a judge in August ordered the clerks of Bernalillo County and Santa Fe County to issue marriage licenses to couples without regard to their gender or sexual orientation.
“We conclude that although none of New Mexico’s marriage statutes specifically prohibit same-gender marriages, when read as a whole, the statutes have the effect of precluding same-gender couples from marrying and benefitting from the rights, protections, and responsibilities that flow from a civil marriage,” the court said in its ruling. “We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law.”
Judge Alan Malott in Albuquerque ruled in August that denying gay couples the right to marry violates the New Mexico constitution. State rules require couples wishing to marry to obtain a license and doesn’t define or limit the definition of “couples” to heterosexual, he said.
A group of New Mexico lawmakers filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that the state’s marriage statutes permit marriage only between a man and a woman.
‘Unbroken Line’
“The intent of the legislature, a comprehensive reading of all the statutes addressing marriage, this court’s treatment of marriage, the consensus of past and present New Mexico attorneys general, and an unbroken line of precedents from other jurisdictions all confirm that the marriage statutes in this state permit marriage only between one man and one woman,” the lawmakers said in their filing.
New Mexico, whose voters chose a Republican governor in 2010 and President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the past two presidential elections, is the only U.S. state that has no law related to same-sex marriage or civil unions. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit this year on behalf of gay couples who were denied marriage licenses.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that denied federal benefits to same-sex couples legally married in states that allowed it. The court also reinstated a federal judge’s order allowing gay marriages in California, ruling that opponents of gay marriage didn’t have legal standing to defend a voter-approved ban on same-sex weddings.
The case is State of New Mexico v. Malott, 34,306, Supreme Court for the State of New Mexico (Santa Fe).
To contact the reporters on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net; Edvard Pettersson in federal court in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net