Judge Rules Against NY Mayor Who Performed Same-Sex 'Marriages'
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
October 31, 2005
(AgapePress) - New York's highest appeals court has ruled that the mayor of one village does not have the legal right to perform homosexual "marriages." The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court sided with Liberty Counsel, a group that took legal action against a pro-homosexual official after he proceeded to solemnize same-sex weddings in defiance of the law.
In February 2004, Jason West, the mayor of New Paltz village near Rochester, announced he would solemnize same-sex marriages, even though state law defines marriage as being only between a man and a woman. However, a judge has now issued an injunction against West or any other village officials performing same-sex weddings.
Liberty Counsel senior counsel Erik Stanley feels the judge's decision is an important one. He insists that renegade mayors and rogue public officials do not have authority to violate established marriage laws.
"If same-sex couples want to have the right to marriage or want to be married, then they need to -- like every social initiative -- go through the legislature and convince the people and the legislature that the laws need to be changed," Stanley says.
"The laws of New York in this case are very clear," the Liberty Counsel lawyer notes. "Same-sex couples do not have the right to marry, and what we had done is we brought an action just simply forcing the mayor to abide by the very clear laws of the State of New York."
The New York appeals court ruled that West and the Village of New Paltz had exceeded their authority and violated state law by solemnizing homosexual marriages in a state that neither authorizes nor recognizes the validity of such marriages.
In its opinion, the court stated that the mayor had "robed himself with judicial powers and declared the marriage laws of his state unconstitutional. Having concluded that the Legislature violated the constitution, he then wrapped himself with that body's power and drafted his own set of documents for licensing marriages."
Stanley maintains that mayors and other civic leaders have no right to break the law and undermine traditional marriage in order to push their own pro-homosexual agenda on the public. "It would literally wreak havoc on the country if any governmental official, no matter what level they are, was allowed to just go out on their own and declare laws unconstitutional, write new laws, and really just create their own kind of banana republic," he says.
Liberty Counsel has defended nearly 40 marriage cases throughout the United States in the past 18 months. Mat Staver, president and general counsel of the legal defense and policy organization, contends that a society's stability hangs on the strength of its families, and he sees the push for same-sex marriage as a destabilizing attack on marriage and on the family.
To the extent that marriage is undermined and the family weakened, Staver asserts, communities are destabilized and children suffer damaging consequences. For this reason, he says citizens must decide the issue of same-sex marriage once and for all by passing state and federal constitutional amendments to protect the traditional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
