They walked out of a tiny brick village hall, past the woman murmuring to Jesus and the stolid police officers, through the cheering college students, down the narrow aisle and onto the platform surrounded by the glitter of flashing cameras.
Here, Billiam van Roestenberg and Jeffrey McGowan greeted beaming Mayor Jason West for an event Friday that turned this small Hudson Valley college community, 75 miles north of New York City, into the next flash point in the debate over same-sex marriages.
“Do you Billiam take Jeffrey … to be your lawfully wedded partner,” West asked the 38-year-old man, the tears welling in his eyes captured by a phalanx of television crews.
“I do,” van Roestenberg answered.
“I do,” echoed his partner, a 39-year-old former Army major.
“Then by the power invested in me by the state of New York I now declare you legally wed,” West proclaimed to the cheers of about 500 people surrounding them and the jeers of a small group of protesters.
With that ceremony, West became the first elected official in New York state to conduct a same-sex marriage. Twenty marriages followed in the next two hours.
None of the couples received a marriage license, making it unclear whether their marriages are recognized under state law.
New York officials struggled with how to respond. Gov. George Pataki asked Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer to seek an injunction against West, 26, who is the first elected Green Party mayor in the state. But Spitzer’s office declined, saying the issue can be resolved in the courts.
In California, the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request by Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to immediately shut down San Francisco’s gay weddings and to nullify the nearly 3,500 marriages already performed since Mayor Gavin Newsom gave the go-ahead two weeks ago.
At the prodding of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lockyer asked the court to intervene in the emotionally charged debate while justices consider the legality of the marriages. But the justices declined, and told the city and a conservative group that opposes gay marriages to file new legal briefs by Friday.
