Can same-sex couples from other states go to Massachusetts and get married there?
Some have already done so, but state law prevents out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if they are not eligible for marriage in their home state. And in no other state but Massachusetts is same-sex marriage legal. Same-sex couples from outside Massachusetts filed suit in June to seek to have the Massachusetts limit on out-of-staters declared unconstitutional.Q. Must marriages between gays and lesbians that are performed in one state, be recognized as valid if the same-sex couple moves to another state, where such marriages are illegal? There is no definitive answer to this yet. Yale Law School Professor Lea Brilmayer, an expert on the conflict between laws of different states, testified in March to a Senate Judiciary Committee panel that more than 100 years of precedents show that states have in some cases refused to recognize marriages performed in other states, if those marriages were deemed to violate local public policy. The “public policy” doctrine, she sai
