Several sources have pointed me to today’s news that the Governor of New York, David Paterson, has instructed state officials that they must recognize same-sex marriages conducted outside of New York as legal. New York, of course, does not allow same-sex marriages. But Massachusetts does and California looks like it will. For that matter, Canada does as well. Now in order to get married in Massachusetts the people involved have to be residents of the state. But what happens if they change jobs and have to move to New York? Would they be no longer married? And thus far California is planning to let anyone marry there. Indeed, “gay marriage tourism” has been suggested as a potential benefit to the state. So this is a real issue for other parts of the USA. How can someone be legally married in one state, but not in another?

Doubtless there will be a challenge to Governor Patterson’s ruling. Indeed, the whole basis of the Governor’s ruling is that he has had legal advice that he has to recognize the marriages until such time as the State Legislature says otherwise. It also seems likely that conservative governors in other states will now be under pressure to state that same-sex marriages will not be recognized in their domains. It could all get quite complicated quite quickly. Indeed, the Republicans are very much hoping that it will because they see it as a possible wedge issue in the coming Presidential election. They feel that if Obama (or Clinton) can be tagged as the pro-gay-marriage candidate then this will give McCain a significant advantage.

Meanwhile there are reports that San Diego County is considering allowing staff to opt out of performing same-sex marriages if they object to doing so. There are also government officials in the UK trying to get out of having to perform their duties because they are homophobic. The LA Times is rightly scathing. We wouldn’t tolerate a government official refusing to perform a marriage for a mixed race couple because they happened to be racists. If the local law, be it in California or the UK, says that same-sex marriages (or civil unions or whatever) are legal, then government employees are bound to follow that law.

Yeah, I know, I’m not a Californian citizen – I just spend a lot of time there. But people are apparently interested in my writing about this stuff, so I do.