Mayor faces charges for marrying gays




BY SUMATHI REDDY AND ANDREW METZ
ALBANY BUREAU

March 2, 2004, 7:58 PM EST

ALBANY -- Four days after presiding over a slew of same-sex marriages in his quaint Hudson Valley village, the mayor of New Paltz was charged Tuesday with 19 criminal violations and faces a court hearing Wednesday night, injecting the state's debate over gay marriages with increasing drama and urgency.

Mayor Jason West, 26, of the Green Party, is scheduled to respond in town court to charges that he broke the state's domestic relations law by solemnizing 25 marriages without a license, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine or up to a year in jail.

New Paltz Police Chief Raymond Zappone said he hand-delivered the summons to West for his actions, which have sparked international attention and brought the contentious national debate over gay marriages to New York.

The ceremonies Friday also led to a face-off between the state's top two elected officials, Republican Gov. George Pataki and Democrat Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has his eye on his own gubernatorial bid.

With other New York officials considering following West, Spitzer has said his office will soon offer a clarifying opinion on gay marriages and the mayor's actions, but local New Paltz officials acted first.

"I went to ... office and knocked," Zappone said. "It was very simple."

Zappone said Tuesday he and Republican Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams concluded that "we have significant, sufficient evidence to take the charge forward."

West plans to plead not guilty Wednesday and said he will perform more same-sex marriages Saturday. "I'm incredibly disappointed," he told the Associated Press.

West's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz of Manhattan, said his client did not break any laws. "Jason West does not belong in a criminal prosecution any more than Rosa Parks," he said.

West and his attorneys have said that New York law is gender-neutral and that he has the authority to solemnize marriages without a license.

Pataki, however, insisted again Tuesday that the state's marriage law is clear. "Marriage is between a man and a woman, and as public officials we should enforce that law," Pataki said.

Pressure is mounting on Spitzer, who last week refused the governor's request for an injunction to prevent and nullify the marriages.

On Monday, Spitzer, who is not opposed to same-sex marriages, insisted he would not make his statements hastily. But he said that law enforcement officials in New Paltz had every right to pursue legal action if they wanted.

Williams said the charges against West were not about gay marriage but solely about whether solemnizing marriages without a license is against the law.

"We are not so arrogant to believe that this county or the village of New Paltz should be determining such a far-reaching and significant issue of whether New York state or the country should recognize same-sex marriages," Williams said.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/st...span-headlines



It's about time somebody grew a set of balls and charged somebody for breaking the law.

Yeah, maybe now the laws will get changed

That's the plan, to amend the Constitution.

Keep your fingers crossed.

...what's the amendment, exactly?

To allow individual states to decide if they will recognize marriages from any other state.

I hope he does some time.

I hope teh law has better things to do then queer bashing like catching armed robbers and all those sex attackers out there. What a fucking waste of goverment time!!!!

So only some laws should be enforced, but not others? What other laws do you think shouldn't be enforced?

Revolutions are started by courageous individuals.

The gay marriage genie has been released from its bottle and no amount of bitching by conservatives is going to put it back....like the ban on interracial marriages years ago, the same arguments are being used for and against today.

And we all know what happened to those laws banning interracial marriages.

Gay marriages hasn't caused a massive devestating apocalypse.
There have been no real problems whatsoever...and yet people still say that by legalizing it something horrible will happen.

As if something horrible hasn't already happened in America's past before any form of legalized same-sex marriages?

If you wish to say anything about this, it is simply put a brave move by a mayor who realizes just how wrong it is to persecute or discriminate against someone due to their sexual preference.

Unless if we should start having lynch mobs that run around hanging people for no other reason than their sexual preference?

Yeah..let's keep on regressing back into our barbaric attitudes which we should have gotten beyond a long time ago, when blacks and women were finally treated like equals.

I don't think that allowing gays to marry is going to break us, but what are we gonna say the people who want plural marriages and to those who want incestuous marriages?

Can't the same arguments that support gay marriage be used to support these other here-to-fore illegal unions?

Sure.
And I really don't care if people want to have multiple marriages(so long as there is no way wherein they can abuse that system), or have a marriage between a sibling/relative occur.

The main reason that multiple marriages isn't allowed is....? I actually haven't heard many arguments made which would support an anti-multi-marriage.

The same thing can somewhat apply to incestual marriages, aside from the fact that off-spring would have a higher chance at genetic deformaties. However, a lot of people who are older get married and end up having children, and if you know anything at all about women and when they should have children after the age of 38 the chances of genetic deformaties occuring in pregnancy increase dramatically. So even if you don't marry someone you're related to directly there's still a chance for the same thing to occur.

So, do you agree that the same arguments, (people who love one another, etc) can be used to support the plural marraiges and the incestuous marriages that will occure?

It makes sense to me at least.

As to the genetic problems inherent in incestuous marriages, that could be easily taken care of through the abortion process and that is already settled law.

Now, how about the people who want to marry animals? As long as the animal is not mistreated, wouldn't that be OK also?

We already allow animals to be kept as pets, we make decisions about their medical needs, we have them nutered and put to death when we think it best, why would marriage to an animal be in any way unfair to the animal?

And if it is not, why can't a person who wants to marry an animal--do so?

Logically if someone has the sexual preference for wanting a sibling, or so on and so forth, then it should be allowed as well.

However in the case of animals/humans or children/adults it doesn't work, since the animal or child is incapable or normally considered unable to make a decision as to if they wish to be married or not.
In the absence of an ability for the child or animal to make it's own decisions the government makes decisions for it, due to the fact that they neither have the intelligence nor in most cases the mental maturity required to make the decisions.

I also feel that way when it pertains to the mentally handicapped, by the way...if they can't handle taking care of themselves then why the hell would they be allowed to get married?

OK, so now it seems that you can be comfortable with polygamy and incest, but not bestiality because the animal cannot make an intelligent decision about whether or not it want's to get married.

BUT, why does the animal HAVE to make that choice? Are not animals under the dominion of humans? Do we not already make all manner of decisions regarding animals including medical decisions, nutering, hair cutting and other decisions right up to and including killing them for food or in some cases to end their suffering when they are sick or injured? Of course.

Why then, would an animal necessarily NEED to agree to be the husband or bride of a human?

Oh, certainly I would agree that if a human was cruel to an animal, that could be stopped, but we already do that.

If two men or two women want to sanctify their relationship, and the state has not the right to disallow that, why couldn't a woman do the same thing with her dog? Or a man with his pony?

I say it is one way or the other: Either it IS, or it IS NOT the states business who--or what--one marries.

You're comparing people who know, understand and basically demonstrate that they're aware of everything to something wherein a person could just abuse the system by marrying a creature that has no way of saying if it wishes to be married or not.

Basically, you're saying because we take care of an animal then we have every right by which to marry to it. This doesn't work out, primarily due to the fact that we could then marry anything else, including something like bacteria(we do in fact raise some Bacteria, feed it and the such), not to mention plants.
Plus little babies. Would you believe that people should be able to marry 1 year olds?

The marriage to a 1 year old child is not permitted in any event, because the child is human and has rights that an animal does not.

But that is not the point that I was speaking about.

I am saying that since the position is, that the state interferes in the rights of gays by disallowing their marriage to one another, and since the state also interferes with the rights of siblings who wish to marry each other, that the state also interferes in the right of the person who wishes to marry an animal.

I contend that the animal has no right in the matter because it is the property of the person who owns it.

That right of ownership (dominion) is supported by the state in that it is perfectly legal to kill the animal for food, or to neuter the animal or to require the animal to undergo surgical proceedure without and consultation with the animal. The only restrictions on that dominion, imposed by the state, are acts of cruelty or neglect. Marriage to a human would hardly be considered an act of cruelity OR neglect.

And yes, as long as the state is not permitted to legislate on matters of the heart, I think that one could in fact marry a virus or a rose bush--if one truely loved one.

The only thing left for the state to decide is how to provide benifits to a Hydrangia.

Heh.
Logically you're right.
And logic normally dictates my beliefs.

However at times I must also consider the fact that Human's are NOT the greatest things in the world, and we can not consider ourselves masters over everything.
Which would mostly be the case in terms of marrying an animal.

Owning an animal, and then enforcing it into something such as marriage, is mainly a form of enslavement. We enslave many animals, and I know you'll use that as an excuse, however when you look at how we normally enslave animals(crude labor), you'll realize that they serve a fundamental part to the society that we live in. They take care of handling what we normally can not do, and as we become more technologically advanced you'll also have noticed we are starting to replace them more and more.

This means that animals were primarily used as tools, not as pets. Cats hunted mice, dogs helped in hunting such things as foxes and quail(sp), and cows were used as food sources, while oxen helped to pull things.

Now they're used as just..pets...to help relieve stress.
All in all using an animal as a sex toy denotes that they do not nor can not have any overall decision in that matter.
However, we aren't talking about animal related sex, unless if you wish to use that as the basis behind the overall thing.

Yet by saying that someone who lusts after a cow can marry that cow...is like my saying that if I lust after some hot little girl she MUST marry me.

See why I'm against it?