COURT IS TOLD OF CHAOS ON MARRIAGE: From the Boston Globe

Predicting legal chaos in Massachusetts if gay and lesbian couples marry starting May 17, same-sex marriage opponents asked a single justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court yesterday to delay allowing such marriages for 2 1/2 years, until after voters consider a constitutional ban in late 2006.

C.J. Doyle, the executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, said the court should postpone implementation of its landmark ruling until Massachusetts residents vote on a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage and establish civil unions.

"Legal chaos will be created by the issuance of same-sex 'marriage' licenses before the issue goes to the citizens for a vote in 2006," Doyle said in an eight-page petition filed with the SJC yesterday. The court, he added, "has a duty to avoid this inevitable conflict and confusion by simply staying the entry of its judgment pending the outcome of the amendment process."

Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, decried the petition as a "desperate move and a publicity stunt."

"This is an end run around the constitutional process; it's an end run around the court decision," she said.

So far, the SJC has given opponents of gay marriage no wiggle room to prohibit such weddings, ruling in November that limiting marriage to heterosexuals violated the state constitution and declaring in February that civil unions would create second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians.

Doyle is hoping that one of the seven justices sitting alone will grant a stay on the narrower issue of whether granting same-sex marriage licenses should be delayed until voters decide the proposed referendum. Each month, one of the justices holds a single justice session to hear cases. This month, the justice is Roderick L. Ireland, who was one of the four who agreed last fall that it is unconstitutional to bar same-sex couples from the rights and benefits of civil marriage. ...

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School and author of a friend-of-the-court brief supporting gay marriage, dismissed Doyle's petition as a "completely pointless exercise."

He said Doyle was unlikely to meet the two fundamental requirements for securing a stay: First, that a constitutional ban will probably pass -- which he said only a soothsayer could predict -- and, second, that irreparable harm will result if the request for a stay is rebuffed.

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