Second Draft of History

Hundreds of people crowded in front of Village Hall in New Paltz’s Peace Park February 24, 2004 to watch Green Party mayor Jason West solemnize 25 same-sex marriages. This was the first time in the history of New York State that same-sex marriages were performed. Within hours, former-Governor George E. Pataki requested that former-attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, to get a court order to stop the marriages, a request that Spitzer denied. As 25 same-sex couples said, “I do,” a new front in the gay rights movement. These solemnizations were of the first instances that small towns, instead of metropolitan hubs like San Francisco, received national attention for their activism in the gay rights movement. As West performed these marriages, he not only got the media’s attention, but the judicial system’s as well. Ulster County District Attorney, Donald A. William, charged former-Mayor West with 19 counts of solemnizing a marriage without a license, a misdemeanor. He wasn’t charged for all 25 marriages because police who were at the ceremony only saw 19 ceremonies themselves. If declared guilty, he could have faced up to a 500-dollar fine and a year in jail for each count. The charges were dismissed that summer and reinstated the following February only to be dropped soon after. As Jason West runs for mayor once again, seven years later, these articles reflect on the same-sex marriages that attracted a concentration of media coverage rarely seen in this small college town. We look back on the social and political climate of the village in 2004 and investigate how the community was shaped by this event. Despite West’s gesture, not much progress has been made on national towards marriage equality, and nothing has been accomplished on the state level.