Posted by Chairm
The Associated Press reporter on this story reflects the corruption that has been visited upon our marriage culture.
Lesbian asks Missouri court to annul same-sex marriage.
Item No. 1

The two women were married in Boston three years ago, less than a year after Massachusetts became the first -- and only -- state to legalized same-sex unions.

The women were not married. The Massachusetts license that is now issued to applicants does not refer to husband and wife but to Party A and Party B. Neither of the women became wives. They formed a type of union that has replaced marriage in that state.
Other states are not obligated to treat a substitute as bonafide marriage.
Also, contrary to the reporter, there is no lack of "legalization". What the reporter slipped into this article is the false assumption that legalization means a merger with marital status.
As for Massachusetts, it is not the only state to have various routes to protections for nonmarital arrangements such as the all-male or the all-female variety (homosexual or not).
Lower down in the story the reporter contradicts Item No. 1 by informing the reader that,

At least nine states have approved spousal rights of some form for gay couples.

A few of these nine states have imposed same-sex union mergers with marriage whereby a new status (called civil union or somesuch) has been attached to the hip of marital status.
Wherever this has been enacted, it is a localized merger, as is the SSM merger in Massachusetts. There is no federal standing. There is, however, plenty of invitation for interstate conflict and controversey.
Hence this particular case about which the reporter wrote.
Item No. 2

Judge Daniel Kellogg said he has taken the matter into consideration and is treating it as an annulment, not a divorce.

There is nothing to annul in Missouri where there is no localized merger of SSM and marriage. The reporter missed something or the Judge has some bigtime explaining to do.
The couple can return to Massachusetts and request dissolution.
The union they seek to dissolve, by the way, has no basis in statutory law in Massachusetts. The high court of that state claimed to have changed common-law marriage there, but Massachusetts has never had common-law marriage. The legislature did not change the marriage statutes. Whatever the couple thought they were getting into, and want to get out of, exists in a muddle that the state authorities created in response to the SSM campaign.
They should not place the manufactured controversy at the doorstep of the Missouri state authorities.
The lawyers for these women could challenge the very basis for issuing a license for SSM. But they won't because pulling on that thread would unravel the SSM merger in Massachusetts and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the two women and their lawyers are on board with the SSM campaign.
Instead of pursuing a principled path, they are trying to contribute to the campaign's goal of unravelling marriage recognition in Missouri and other states.

It's not the first time a gay couple has tried to dissolve a marriage performed in another state [i.e. in Rhode Island].

Returning to Massachusetts is the solution that is also available to the Rhode Island women who rushed across the border to SSM in Massachusetts. They knew they could not SSM in Rhode Island.
They could seek an "annulment" in Massachusetts on the basis that they were not eligible applicants for the license because, being nonresidents, they contravened the rules in Massachusetts.
The error of invalidity was made there, not in Rhode Island.
Likewise with the Missouri couple. Localization is the central fact.
Item No. 3

They moved to Missouri not long after the ceremony. Sparks has asked for an annulment, saying in a court petition that she does not recognize the marriage. Her attorney, William Bird, asked in court documents that the marriage be declared invalid because Missouri does not recognize same-sex marriages.

The reporter (or the reporter's editor) probably botched this part due to a bias in favor of the SSM merger. That, or the attorney is hoping that the judge will add to the house of cards built in Massachusetts.
Annulment does not dissolve a marriage.
It means there was no marriage in the first place. Merely relocating to Missouri does not introduce grounds for annulment.
I suppose reporters and the rest of us can find confusions twisted up by phrases like "invalid marriage" and "dissolution of marriage".
Annulment does not invalidate a marriage.
It is a public declaration that no marriage actually existed. The court decree (i.e. the annulment) adds clarity, it does not itself invalidate what was invalid at the getgo.
I think that the lack of validity of SSM in Missouri is already very clear in the case of the Missouri women who SSM'd in Massachusetts while they were resident there. Since they moved shortly after the ceremony, it is reasonable to say that they knew where they were going and that their localized status would not travel with them.
In the case of an actual annulment, and to ensure clarity for the couple and for their community, the court performs fact-finding and weighs the evidence. Often this is very short work because the lack of validity is patently obvious. However, it is insufficient that one or both of the spouses deny the existence of the marriage. In addition, such a court decree can be sought by other people, not just the couple. Clearly distinguishing between marriage and nonmarriage is the purpose of the court's involvement.
Of course, marriage has both a public and a private aspect. Hence the difference between a void marriage and a voidable marriage. Both legal terms designate the underestanding that there is no actual marriage.
The void marriage is invalid due to the public aspect -- such as bigamous or closely-related scenarios. The voidable is an invalid marriage based on the private aspect of the conjugal relationship, such as sexual consumation and other matters properly known by the man and woman alone.
Sometimes the public and private aspect overlap and that is often where the courts are asked to intervene in ways that will recognize that an error occured and that there may be consequences, such as children born, that require society treating an particular instance of an invalid marriage as if it was a marriage in some ways, such as for child and/or spousal support.
A divorce is based on a valid marriage. It dissolves a bonafide union under marriage law. It treats the married couple as married until a divorce is established and decreed by the court's intervention. The court produces the divorce. By doing so it does not decree that the dissolved marriage was not actually a marriage.
The AP reporter blurred significant distinctions in the story because the SSM campaign has corrupted the shared public understanding of what marriage actually is. This bleeds into the meaning of both divorce and annulment. Yet another example of gay identity politics using legal reform to change social norms and the culture itself.
This is very like the way that the model of step-parent adoption was stretched out of shape for the sake of same-sex "second parent adoption". That, like the SSM merger today, was driven by gay identity politics.


(Source Link)