Fridae

A mayor in upstate New York was charged on Tuesday with 19 criminal counts of falsely marrying same-sex couples, reported Reuters.

New Paltz Mayor Jason West faces 19 counts of solemnising marriages for couples who had no licenses, a domestic relations law misdemeanour, said Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams. New Paltz is about 80 miles north of Manhattan.

Although West had married 25 couples last Friday, the misdemeanour complaint lists only 19 charges as police at the scene provided eyewitness accounts of only 19 ceremonies. Williams warned that more counts would be added if West marries more couples.

The state's first elected Green Party mayor who made headlines as New York's first official to marry gays could face a fine of up to US$2,500 or up to one year in jail but that Williams said he would not press for jail time.

Despite the charges, West said he will go ahead with up to two dozen same-sex weddings this weekend.

West who is scheduled to be in town court Wednesday night to answer charges that he married 19 couples knowing they did not have marriage licenses, has said that he will plead innocent at the hearing.

"I'm incredibly disappointed," West said. "Apparently, it's a crime to uphold the constitution of New York State."

"I'm not saying if same-sex marriages should be illegal," Williams said. "I am exclusively deciding whether Jason West, the mayor of New Paltz, presided over marriages in which people did not present a license."

New York Gov. George Pataki said his counsel finds gay marriage is clearly not allowed under the law, but he will await State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's opinion later this week whether New York law allows gay marriage.

Gay and lesbian rights activists, however, insist that state laws enshrined in Article 3 of the Domestic Relations Law (DRL) are gender neutral and that same-sex marriages, though never performed until last week in New Paltz, are clearly permissible within the four corners of existing law.

More than 3,400 couples have been married in San Francisco since Feb 12 while West now has about 1,000 couples on a waiting list. Last week, US President George Bush last week called for a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.