Judge won't halt San Francisco gay weddings

By Evelyn Nieves
The Washington Post

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In San Francisco, as gay and lesbian couples lined up beginning at 4 a.m. to join the 3,000 pairs who have received licenses in the past eight days, Superior Court Judge Ronald Evans Quidachay consolidated two lawsuits seeking to halt the same-sex weddings. But he refused requests from the conservative organizations that filed the lawsuits to ban the marriages immediately, ruling that they had not proved that the city is doing irreparable harm by issuing the licenses.

The decision means that marriages will continue in the city for at least several more weeks with the potential of thousands of gay couples marrying before the legal challenges are resolved in court.

The lawsuits against the city were consolidated because San Francisco on Thursday filed a suit challenging the state's ban on gay marriage and naming as defendants the two groups that have sued the city, the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Campaign for California Families. The next hearing on the suits is in mid- to late March.

The city's lawsuit argues that Proposition 22, the 2000 voter-backed law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, violates the state constitution's equal-protection clause.

Mathew Staver, a lawyer representing the Campaign for California Families, said he believes the court ultimately will find that Mayor Gavin Newsom acted illegally when he started the process last week.

"He can't decide to grant same-sex marriage licenses any more than he can declare war against a foreign country," Staver said.

Meanwhile, in Bernalillo, N.M., a rural town north of Albuquerque, dozens of gay and lesbian couples flocked to the Sandoval County Clerk's office after the clerk announced she would grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Clerk Victoria Dunlap, a Republican, said she decided to grant the licenses after the county attorney determined that New Mexico law is unclear on the issue. County Attorney David Mathews said state law defines marriage as a contract between parties but does not mention gender.

"It's going to be across the country, and so we wanted to be ahead of the curve," Dunlap said, referring to the question of whether gay marriages are legal, according to The Associated Press. Her action came during a week in which such prominent local elected officials as the mayors of Chicago, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City declared their support for gay marriage.

Dunlap's office granted licenses to at least 15 same-sex couples before the New Mexico attorney general, Patricia Madrid, issued an opinion saying the licenses were invalid under state law. It was not immediately clear whether the opinion would stop Sandoval County from issuing the licenses.
 
Outside the courthouse, two preachers spent the day conducting marriage ceremonies.

The county's decision came a little more than one week after San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to thousands of gay couples in a direct challenge to California law. As of yesterday afternoon, 3,150 couples had been issued marriage licenses. About 300 couples were turned away at day's end, and the city announced that it would make appointments for marriage licenses and weddings for the next three weeks.

Staver's comment was reported by The Associated Press.

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