Santa Fe City Attorney maintains gay marriage already legal in N.M.

Santa Fe Mayor David Coss is co-sponsoring a city resolution recognizing gay marriage as legal in New Mexico.

City Attorney Geno Zamora says in a three-page opinion that New Mexico’s statutory definition of marriage is gender-neutral and doesn’t define marriage as between a man and a woman. The law instead emphasizes the consent of the two people who want to wed, saying that marriage is “contemplated by the law as a civil contract, for which the consent of the contracting parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential,” Zamora noted

Zamora also notes that New Mexico already recognizes marriages from other states, “without regard to the sex of the parties,” and that the state Constitution requires equal treatment regardless of gender. And while New Mexico’s statutory marriage application form is “described in terms of male and female applicants,” the form is trumped by the Constitution’s Equal Rights Amendment and the specific language of the marriage statute, “which does not require that the applicants be of the opposite sex,” Zamora’s opinion says.

The opinion says same-sex couples who have a marriage application denied  should petition in district court for a writ directing a county clerk to issue a license “because the gender of the applicants is not a statutory ground for denial.”

“It’s time to change New Mexico’s slow road of marriage equality into a super highway,” said Bushee.

Coss said Santa Fe is “a city of respect, acceptance and diversity that embraces all our residents.”