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Out-of-state gay couples poised for legal marriage in Massachusetts


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The possibility of out-of-state gay couples being allowed marriages in Massachusetts was given a boost by the vote of the Senate to remove a old law.

While presumably not designed with gay couples in mind, the 1913 law prohibited couples to be married if they could not legally wed in their home state. After Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay marriages In 2004, the then-governor Mitt Romney ordered the "then-little-known" law to be enforced, so that out-of-state gay couples could not wed there.

Current Governor Deval Patrick, whose own daughter is gay, is in support of the Senate's proposal, which other critics have said has racist undertones: it dates from a time when the most common "illegal" marriages, that the law refers to, were those between mixed race couples.

The fact that this law is in spirit not about gay marriages, but rather race, seems certain to be abolished and, as one senator remarked, "put the final nail in the coffin of those dark days."
rwylie

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