IT HAS BEEN NEARLY 400 YEARS since the first European set foot on what was to become Rhode Island. Since that time, Rhode Island has never authorized, licensed or recognized a “marriage” between persons of the same sex. Rhode Island’s current laws reflect that history.

Yet on Feb. 20, state Atty. Gen. Patrick Lynch abandoned those laws when he wrote an opinion saying he could find no reason for refusing to recognize a same-sex “marriage” between Rhode Islanders who had traveled to Massachusetts to be married.

When we first read the attorney general’s opinion, we were relatively trusting of its statements and conclusions. After all, it looks and sounds like a capable legal analysis. Mr. Lynch would have us believe that he was merely following precedent when he said that a Massachusetts same-sex “marriage” has to be recognized in Rhode Island unless Rhode Island has a strong public policy against it.

However, the deeper we peered, the more evident it became that his opinion was not just inadequate but lacking any legal support. His opinion is deserving of an extensive critique in a law-review article. We hope it gets one. In this essay, however, we touch relatively briefly on its major deficiencies.

In our judgment, the attorney general has simply capitulated and passed this political “hot potato.” He rushes to embrace the imperious work of a handful of sitting Massachusetts judges while failing to cite the key Massachusetts law from 1913 or the recent Cote-Whitaker cases from that same jurisdiction. His use of Rhode Island law to institute and recognize same-sex marriage is even worse.

Can two persons of the same sex “marry” in Rhode Island? We are not aware of anybody, including Mr. Lynch, who says “yes.” Accordingly, his conclusion that Rhode Island must recognize a Massachusetts same-sex “marriage” is wrong. Surprisingly, it is wrong because of a Massachusetts statute.

In 1913, Massachusetts adopted an evasion-of-marriage statute that is still in force. It reads: “No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.” (M.G.L.A. ch. 207, §11).

In the original Cote-Whitaker litigation, same-sex couples from six states who wished to “marry” in Massachusetts sued the state, hoping to obtain a decision that would let them do so notwithstanding the state’s evasion-of-marriage statute. The Massachusetts high court denied the appeal with respect to couples from four states, but sent the case back to Superior Court for a decision about couples from New York and Rhode Island.

We wish that the Rhode Island attorney general has asked himself this question: Why is it that Rhode Island’s same-sex couples must go to Massachusetts to “marry?”

The answer is vividly self-evident and conclusive: because there is no such thing as same-sex “marriage” in Rhode Island. If there is no same-sex “marriage” in Rhode Island, those couples cannot, by operation of the Massachusetts law just quoted, be validly “married” in Massachusetts. If they are not validly “married” in Massachusetts, then Rhode Island does not need legal opinions discussing whether or not such marriages must be recognized in Rhode Island. There is no Massachusetts “marriage” to be recognized.

Why can’t persons of the same sex “marry” in Rhode Island? To begin with, a license is required, and the licensure statute refers to the “female party” and the “male party” (R.I.G.L. 1956, §15-2-1). There seems to be very little doubt that Rhode Island law requires a man and a woman for a marriage to occur. The state legal code contains hundreds of references to “husband” and “wife,” “bride” and “groom,” “male” and “female,” “man” and “woman,” “mother” and “father,” “widow” and “widower” and “spouse.” These laws also tell us what a “wife” is, and what a “husband” is. A son, for example, can have a wife, but not a husband. There can be a “son’s daughter’s husband” but not a “son’s daughter’s wife.”

All of these sex-specific references to marriage were ignored in the attorney general’s opinion. Mr. Lynch’s opinion is blind to the larger meaning of our state’s own statutes, and is absolutely blind to the sexual integration and sexual complementarity that are innate and elemental in marriage. For him, as for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, any two committed adults will do, whatever their sexes. But this is not the law of Rhode Island.

However, if the state chooses to take the attorney general’s opinion as law, the immediate result is that Rhode Islanders will be paying for benefits to “Massachusetts spouses” even though no one in Rhode Island has ever voted to recognize such relationships, confer such benefits, or to be taxed to pay for them.

As the executive and legislative branches work feverishly to address budget deficits, this is hardly another cost the taxpayers of Rhode Island should be forced to pay. The people of Rhode Island have been denied a sort of fundamental due process of law because no competent advocate has been defending their interests in Massachusetts — or, we might add, in Rhode Island.

We underscore one additional point that goes to the heart of what is wrong with Attorney General Lynch’s opinion. In his zeal to import Massachusetts law into Rhode Island, Mr. Lynch not only fails to defend the legitimate sovereignty of the State of Rhode Island, his advice makes the state vulnerable to a constitutional attack on its marriage laws.

Joseph Cavanagh is a Providence-based lawyer and Lincoln C. Oliphant, also a lawyer, is a research fellow at the Marriage Law Project at the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C.