Maybe Las Vegas Isn't the Right Analogy

Boston Herald columnist Brett Arends is urging the state to embrace its economic potential as a destination-wedding site for gay marriage. Using an anti-gay-marriage remark made recently by Gov. Romco as a jumping-off point, Arend writes

Would it really be so bad if Massachusetts became the “Las Vegas of gay marriage”?

Mitt Romney used the phrase disparagingly a few weeks ago, as if no one would want such a role.

He was speaking as the state Supreme Judicial Court upheld his use of a 1913 segregation law to stop gays from coming here from other states to get married.

[Ellipsis]

If we are going to have gay marriage, let’s make a profit from it.

Nevada makes more than $4 billion a year from its wedding industry.

And what do you care if two guys in Fort Lauderdale hang a certificate in their bathroom?

We should be encouraging them to come here from all over America to spend their money.

Arend's got the right idea, but the analogy falls a bit short. Why? Because other states have a decidedly Las Vegas attitude toward Massachusetts's gay marriage law: What goes on there (the legal rights conferred through gay marriage in the Commonwealth) stays there (other states don't recognize gay marriages performed in Massachusetts).