If I Marry a Man in New York, Could I Marry a Woman in Kentucky?: The Problem of the Fundamental Right to (Straight) Marriage

Abstract

The Supreme Court's recent decisions on the status of those who are validly married to a member of the same sex leave many questions about the interstate recognition of such marriages unanswered. The law on status in the several states varies so widely that it is hard to determine what even the fundamental right to marry a member of the opposite sex looks like under the current law. This paper attempts to examine whether the states' constrained ability to abridge the fundamental right to opposite-sex marriage extends to interferences based on their seemingly broad right to refuse to recognize marriages between members of the same sex. Walking through the analysis, using the author's legal status as a factual foundation, this paper demonstrates how non-recognition among the states creates needless legal gray areas and implicates some of the most basic assumptions about the extent to which the state may regulate marriage. Unlike other papers in the area, it makes no assumptions, thoroughly investigating the question from several angles. While the question might seem silly, it goes to the heart of the issue of what it means to be married in America in 2013: Could a man, validly married to a man in New York, marry a woman in Kentucky?