Utah GOP leaders not ready to weigh in on marriage fight

Utah Republican leaders stand strongly behind traditional marriage but say it is too early to decide whether the state should jump into federal court opposing a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the national Defense of Marriage Act.

Meanwhile, a state Senate Democrat says he sees no reason for Utah to get involved — except for political reasons.

Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit against the federal law.

All Massachusetts citizens "are entitled to equal treatment under the laws regardless of whether they are gay or straight," she said.

Massachusetts was the first state to recognize gay marriage. And Coakley added that the 16,000 gay couples married in her state are being denied rights — first, because those marriages are not recognized by other states, and second, because gay couples in her state are being unlawfully denied federal spousal benefits.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he wouldn't get involved until after a trial court verdict. "We have often joined suits at the appellate level — in this case on the side of the federal government," said Shurtleff, who adds that he supports Utah's constitutional ban on gay marriages. "But that is down the road a bit."

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, said he sees no legal reason for Utah to join the lawsuit or spend any effort on it. "But gay marriage is classic Utah politics," said McCoy, an attorney and one of three openly gay Utah legislators. "Shurtleff is running for the U.S. Senate next year," and it may look good to conservative Republicans if he defends the DOMA.

"There are no gay married couples in Utah, because we don't recognize gay marriages" no matter where they may have taken place, McCoy said.

Among other issues, Massachusetts will make a states' rights argument: that each state should have the right to define marriage as it sees fit, and that a federal law saying who can and can't be married violates the U.S. Constitution's clause that says powers not specifically given to the federal government fall to the states.

That is the same argument that a number of states' rights advocates — including a new group started by some Utah legislators — are pushing.

Utah's Patrick Henry Caucus, spreading now into other state legislatures, says the federal government and Congress have usurped powers that the Founding Fathers intended for the states.