LYNCH- GADALETA

So here we are in a Licht Judicial Complex elevator: Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Cassandra Ormiston and several newsmen.

It’s Tuesday, and the Supreme Court has just heard arguments on behalf of Ormiston and her spouse, Margaret Chambers, Rhode Island residents who were married in Massachusetts and now seek a divorce here.

Lynch and Ormiston had never met, but it’s no surprise they’re in the same place. He filed a legal brief arguing that Rhode Island should recognize the marriage or, in any event, grant a divorce, and he attended the high court session.

Now, in the elevator, Lynch tells Ormiston, “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”

She says, “Thank you.”

He says, “I mean the divorce, but also this spectacle that I don’t think is necessary.”

He predicts the court will decide in favor of the couple.

Ormiston welcomes Lynch’s concern. “I appreciate it,” she says.

Tuesday’s court session had an air of history in the making. A topic as fresh as tomorrow. Lots of media. Plenty of spectators — indeed, an overflow room with a TV screen. People dressed in their Sunday best, including two little girls you couldn’t help but notice.

As he often does, Chief Justice Frank Williams had a few words of introductory patter for those not familiar with the court’s proceedings. “We haven’t decided this case,” he said in a reassuring tone, although it made me wonder: You mean, some courts do decide before they hear a case?

Karen Loewy, a lawyer with Boston-based GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), which also supports the Ormiston-Chambers right to a divorce, told me she was pleased to be on hand. “Any time you have this opportunity for the courts to engage with these issues and understand the ways in which real people are being affected by the decisions that they’re making, that’s important and that’s exciting,” she said. Still, “This should be a very simple cut-and-dried straightforward case, so, from that perspective this should be boring.”

Well, it wasn’t scintillating. The justices posed several questions to Nancy Palmisciano and Louis Pulner, lawyers for Ormiston and Chambers, respectively, but not with the ferocity or frequency I’d seen in other cases. In fact, I was astonished to see the lawyers, especially Palmisciano, who spoke second, allowed to talk uninterruptedly for minutes at a time.

Still, Loewy was absolutely right: Behind all the legal dialogue, at stake were real issues affecting real people, a point made vivid in a conversation with Patrick Lynch’s sister, Margaret Lynch-Gadaleta, who wed a woman in a Bay State ceremony.

Lynch-Gadaleta, Pawtucket city solicitor, told me it offended her to have to go to Massachusetts to be married. “It’s very upsetting and disappointing,” she said, “because this is my home state. I am Rhode Island born and bred, plan to stay, not going anywhere.”

Ormiston said in an interview, “I’m very glad that this day has come, and my mother and my sister have come from Michigan to support me and all of us.”

Ormiston, 60, is retired. Her last job was buying and selling real estate in Colorado. She also has painted houses.

As for her involvement in this case, thought to be the first in which a same-sex pair wed in Massachusetts has sought an out-of-state divorce, she said, “Having been at this for decades — that is, being a lesbian — I never in my wildest dreams thought that it would be possible for me to marry, and so I was just thrilled to have the opportunity. Obviously, I am not thrilled to be the first divorce case, but it is my right, as it is everyone’s right.”

In regard to her name living on in the law books, Ormiston said, “I really don’t think of it that way. I am the name behind the issue, but, of course, the issue is huge. But I certainly do understand the importance…. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by it.”

Chambers was not in court — or, as Pulner told me, “My client has elected not to play an active public role in this particular litigation and I certainly respect her privacy and her rights to monitor this case as she deems appropriate.”

Interested spectators included Jenn Steinfeld, director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, which has tried for years to get a gay-marriage bill through a resistant General Assembly. She said advocates will put the bill in again but, “Unfortunately, I don’t expect legislation to pass while this governor is in office, so we’re working on a four-year plan right now.”

Republican Governor Carcieri indeed opposes same-sex marriage, as do House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano, both Democrats.

The only Republican who currently looks like he might run for governor in 2010, former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, also opposes it.

But the Democrats most often mentioned — Providence Mayor David Cicilline, General Treasurer Frank Caprio, Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, and Attorney General Lynch — all favor or say they could accept it.

After Tuesday’s hearing on the case involving Chambers and Ormiston, Lynch said that some day — in fact, not that far off — “people will recognize that the world is not collapsing because two people went to another state [where gay marriage is legal] and then returned home to live and work.”

Some 200 other same-sex Rhode Island couples also have wed in Massachusetts.

I’d love to see the Supreme Court say that gay marriages can be performed here. But the issue before it can be expressed in simple terms: Should Family Court here recognize, for divorce purposes, a wedding that was valid in another state? Even Carcieri, in a brief, said a judge here could grant the divorce, though he argued against recognizing the marriage. He calls male/female marriage “the bedrock of Rhode Island family law.”

Pulner, whom you may recognize as a legal analyst on Channel 12, said he felt the Supreme Court hearing went well. “I think the court recognizes the narrow scope of the issue before it and I think they’ll answer this question in a narrow form.”

Palmisciano, Ormiston’s lawyer, told the justices of having worked on a divorce case here involving two Chinese graduate students who’d wed in China. The marriage certificate was recognized without challenge and the parties allowed to split.

Meanwhile, she said, “Here we have two American citizens who have not been able to push their divorce forward because they happen to be members of the same sex.”

After the Supreme Court hearing, Palmisciano told me the little girls I’d seen were her daughters, Ana, 9, and Cristina, 11. As it happens, they are from China themselves.

She said she welcomed their interest in attending because she wanted them to get a glimpse of what she does for a living and why she sometimes needs quiet so she can study something.

More broadly, “I am very adamant that my children understand the legal system, understand what America offers its people.”

Ironically, I believe this divorce case will enhance society’s willingness to accept gay marriage. That’s because the case puts a personal face on gays — at least the names of two individuals. It reinforces the idea that gays are like anyone else and diminishes the idea they are to be feared.

Palmisciano says counselors and psychologists will tell you that difficulties in gay relationships are like difficulties in any other relationship. “I don’t know where the fear comes from, to be honest with you,” she says.

I don’t either.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com