Same-sec couples lgeally wed in Massachusetts

[Gentle Giant]

Fittingly, at a time when the country is marking the anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, another "separate but unequal" institution has been broken open in the state where the fight for freedom and independence in the US began.

Mazel tov to the all the newlyweds.

Same-sex couples begin marrying in Massachusetts; Boston mayor greets plaintiff couple
By Theo Emery, Associated Press, 5/17/2004 09:54

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) Gay couples began exchanging vows here Monday, marking the first time a state has granted gays and lesbians the right to marry and making the United States one of four countries where homosexuals can legally wed.

Tanya McCloskey, 52 and Marcia Kadish, 56, of Malden, went at a breakneck pace to fill out paperwork, get a waiver from the usual three-day waiting period, then return to city hall where they got their marriage license and exchanged vows.

At 9:15 a.m., Cambridge City Clerk Margaret Drury told the couple: ''I now pronounce you married under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.''

It was among the first if not the first same-sex weddings anticipated to take place throughout the state on Monday, the day that under a court order same-sex couples could wed.

''It was really important to us to just be married. We want to be married as soon as we possibly can. Part of it is, we don't know what the Legislature is going to do,'' McCloskey said.

In neighboring Boston, the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the landmark ruling Hillary and Julie Goodridge walked hand-in-hand into city hall to begin the process so they could get married later that day.

It was three years ago that they were turned away from Boston City Hall when they sought a marriage license. This time, Mayor Thomas Menino greeted them personally.

''Once again, we've broken down a barrier in the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts,'' Menino said. ''That's what it's all about.''

The Goodridges, tailed by a throng of reporters watching their every move, were effusive.

''Next to the birth of our daughter, this is the happiest day of our lives,'' Julie Goodridge said.

''It's exhilarating, it's absolutely thrilling, it's overwhelming, I'm so happy,'' Hillary Goodridge said.

The moves came against the backdrop of scattered protests but a largely festive party atmosphere.

''I'm proud of this state,'' said John Meuneir, 43, of Boston, who arrived at City Hall in Boston with his partner, Jim Flanagan, 42, more than two hours before the scheduled 8 a.m opening.

In Cambridge, more than 260 couples filled out application forms for marriage licenses in the wee hours. A throng that police estimated was more than 5,000 people converged on city hall, including some heterosexuals there to witness history in the making.

Massachusetts was thrust into the center of a nationwide debate on gay marriage when the state's Supreme Judicial Court issued its narrow 4-3 ruling in November that gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.

In the days leading up to Monday's deadline for same-sex weddings to begin, opponents looked to the federal courts for help in overturning the Supreme Judicial Court's ruling. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.

The SJC's ruling touched off a frenzy of gay-marriages across the country earlier this year, emboldening officials in San Francisco, upstate New York, and Portland, Ore., to issue marriage licenses as acts of civil disobedience. Even though courts ordered a halt to the wedding march, opponents pushed for a federal constitutional ban on gay marriage, which President Bush has endorsed.

The SJC's ruling also galvanized opponents of gay marriage in Massachusetts, prompting lawmakers in this heavily Democratic, Roman Catholic state to adopt a state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage but legalize Vermont-style civil unions. The earliest it could wind up on the ballot is 2006 possibly casting a shadow on the legality of perhaps thousands of gay marriages that take place in the intervening years.

Massachusetts joins the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada's three most populous provinces as the only places in the world where gays can marry. The rest of Canada is expected to follow soon.

The city of Cambridge, a liberal bastion that is home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, opened its doors to couples at midnight, and remained open until about 4:30 a.m. to accommodate the people who flocked there to make history.

The first couple to receive marriage paperwork was Marcia Hams, 56, and her partner, Susan Shepherd, 52, of Cambridge. After 27 years together, they sat at a table across from a city official shortly after midnight, filling out forms as their adult son looked on.

''I feel really overwhelmed,'' Hams said as they left the clerk's office and walked through a throng of reporters. ''I could collapse at this point.''

About 15 protesters, most from Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, stood near City Hall carrying signs with anti-gay slogans. The group, led by the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., travels around the country protesting homosexuality.

Ray McNulty, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Family Institute, one of the leading organizers of opposition to same-sex marriage, criticized some of the protesters, saying there was no need for hateful speech.

''What's going on down there is legal, and as far as I'm concerned, give those people their happiness for the day,'' McNulty said.

Out-of-state gay couples are likely to challenge Massachusetts' 1913 marriage statute, which bars out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if the union would be illegal in their home state. Gov. Mitt Romney, a gay-marriage opponent, has said the law will be enforced and clerks who give licenses to nonresidents may face legal implications.

Still, local officials in Provincetown, Worcester and Somerville, have said they will not enforce Romney's order and will give licenses to any couples who ask, as long as they sign the customary affidavit attesting that they know of no impediment to their marriage.

Sure enough, Chris McCary, 43, and his partner of six years, John Sullivan, 37, of Anniston, Ala., were first in line outside town hall in Provincetown on Monday morning.

''This is the most important day of my life,'' said McCary.

Both sides in the debate say the issue may figure prominently in the November elections across the country.

Candidates for Congress could face pressure to explain their position on a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, and voters in several states will consider similar amendments to their state constitutions.

Married couples are entitled to hundreds of right and protections under Massachusetts law, including the ability to file joint state tax returns, automatic preference for making medical decisions for a disabled spouse and workers' compensation benefits. But other rights, such as the ability to jointly file a federal tax return, are not available because federal law defines marriage as between a man and a woman.


Associated Press writers Jennifer Peter, Martin Finucane, Ken Maguire, Trudy Tynan and Matt Pitta contributed to this story.

[Gentle Giant]

Oops! sorry about the typo in the title. Didn't mean to imply an endorsement of Triple Sec as the official toasting drink of the gay-marriage movement.

[Mone, can you fix it?]

[clinthopson]

This certainly opens up a whole new window of opportunity for the divorce lawyers.

[Clay Fink]

Tanya McCloskey, 52 and Marcia Kadish, 56, of Malden, went at a breakneck pace to fill out paperwork, get a waiver from the usual three-day waiting period, then return to city hall where they got their marriage license and exchanged vows.

Why couldn't Marcia have found a nice Jewish girl?

[Underhound]

Today my wife and I received our first gay wedding invitation in the mail. A co-worker of Mrs. Hound and his longtime companion are tying the knot next month.

I've gotta get a new suit.

[crawjo]

This is a wonderful and historic moment. And on a personal level, it will mean that my older sister will be able to marry her longtime companion later this year.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

Fittingly, at a time when the country is marking the anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education....

I wish Brown vs. Board of Education every happiness. It isn't every couple that lasts for fifty years. I don't know if Brown or the Board of Education are gay or not, or if both of them are, but damn. I raise a glass to any anniversary that is fifty years in the making. L'Chaim, Brown. To your health, Board of Education. "May your first child be a masculine child," in the immortal words of Luca Brasi.

peep

[Gentle Giant]

The attorneys general of RI and Conn. are contemplating recognizing MA gay marriages. The domino theory returns!

Wedding day
First gays marry; many seek licenses
By Yvonne Abraham and Michael Paulson, Globe Staff *|* May 18, 2004

More than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples streamed into city and town halls across the state yesterday seeking licenses to marry, as Massachusetts marked the first day of legalized same-sex matrimony.

From the tiny town of Rowley, where a town clerk opened her doors four hours earlier than usual so that a selectman could marry his partner, to Boston, where 99 gay couples were greeted by the mayor and given a wedding cake reception in a tent on City Hall Plaza, the day went smoothly, with few disruptions or protests.

Provincetown received 154 license applications, while Northampton accepted 113. Brookline took in 77, Worcester 72, and Newton 38. Cambridge received 41 applications during daylight hours yesterday, in addition to the 227 accepted during its special first-in-the-state session that began shortly after midnight.

Scores of couples from outside Massachusetts also flocked to the clerks' offices, especially in cities and towns that had announced their willingness to issue them licenses in defiance of Governor Mitt Romney's directive that a 1913 law prohibits it.

The status of those out-of-state residents' marriages was in question yesterday. Attorneys general from Connecticut and Rhode Island issued opinions indicating that gay marriages may be recognized in their jurisdictions, echoing a statement from New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The opinions, while nonbinding, may hasten what many expect to be the next battle over gay marriage, whether the rights granted in Massachusetts have legal force elsewhere.

While most couples arriving at city and town halls yesterday were filling out applications to marry, in Cambridge they had moved to the next stage. The city recorded the nation's first legal gay marriage when Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden were married shortly after 9 a.m. by Cambridge City Clerk Margaret Drury. At least 77 same-sex couples were married in the Commonwealth yesterday, according to a Globe survey of several communities.

"Oh, my God, I'm speechless," said McCloskey, a massage therapist. "I'm so happy right now. This is a dream come true. To stand here in front of all these people makes us nervous but proud."

"I'm glowing from the inside," said Kadish. "Happy is an understatement."

A Boston Globe survey indicated that lesbians accounted for two-thirds of the couples seeking licenses yesterday. The survey found that the median age of applicants was 43, though the ages of the 752 couples surveyed in 11 cities and towns ranged from 19 to 75. Ninety percent of the couples surveyed live in Massachusetts.

At Stoughton Town Hall, Peter Fowler, 29, and his partner, Todd Bouffard, 33, stopped by around 4 p.m. They filled out their application, beneath a Norman Rockwell painting of a man and a woman completing their marriage license paperwork while a crusty clerk looks on.

Bouffard, who works at Suffolk University, said he was excited to see the festivities in Boston on his lunch hour. But he and Fowler wanted to take the big step in their hometown. "It was important to do it here," Fowler said. "It seems natural to go where you live."

In Northampton, Joan Williams, 38, and her partner arrived outside the clerk's office at 4 a.m.

"I just wanted to be in the first 50," said Williams, 38, a lawyer, who recently moved to Northampton from San Diego specifically to marry.

The rush of same-sex marriages drew national attention from the news media, interest groups, and policymakers. President George W. Bush reaffirmed his opposition to gay marriage on the day it became legal, and called again for passage of a federal constitutional amendment banning it. "The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges," he said, in a prepared statement. "All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today."

US Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, declined to respond to questions about the start of gay marriages in Massachusetts.

At 9 a.m., three of the seven couples who were plaintiffs in the case that led to the Supreme Judicial Court decision granting gays and lesbians the right to marry arrived at the registry office counters at Boston City Hall. Accompanied by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, they were waited on by Registrar Judith A. McCarthy. Each couple went up to the window to apply for their marriage license as a throng of reporters, and ordinary citizens paying parking tickets, looked on.

Julie and Hillary Goodridge, the lead plaintiffs, got their license application first.

"Next to the birth of our daughter, Annie, this is the happiest day of our lives," said Julie Goodridge, holding back tears.

Hillary Goodridge called the experience "exhilarating. It's absolutely thrilling. We're so grateful. . . . It's overwhelming. I'm so happy." Asked what she would tell people who oppose gay marriage, she said: "Come on over to our house for dinner and find out how loving and normal and boring we are."

The couples, surrounded by a fast-moving crush of reporters, walked from City Hall to the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse a block away to get waivers of the required three-day waiting period so they could be issued their licenses to marry yesterday.

By day's end, all seven plaintiff couples were to be wed.

In Provincetown, a gay vacation mecca, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the advocacy group that argued the Goodridge case, handed out wedding cake, a carrot variety with buttercream frosting generously layered in flower-bud dollops. There were roses for the first 50 couples to receive their certificates. Both the roses and cake were donated by local outfits.

Cheers went up all day as couples emerged from the town hall. "Kiss!" some in the crowd yelled to the couples. Many obliged.

In Somerville, the only city in metropolitan Boston where officials had declared their willingness -- even eagerness -- to marry same-sex couples from outside Massachusetts, multiple couples from Florida, Maryland, and New York arrived seeking marriage licenses. By late afternoon, the city had taken 37 applications for licenses, seven of which were from out-of-state residents.

While officials in other communities were asking couples whether they live in, or intend to live in, Massachusetts, Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone greeted one lesbian couple from Gainesville, Fla., by asking about the fortunes of the University of Florida Gators. And clerks did not blanch as several couples offered out-of-state drivers licenses as identification.

Somerville officials did ask the couples to take an oath that they knew of no impediments to their marriage, and gave them a statement warning that the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics might refuse to accept and record their marriage certificates. But they issued the license applications.

"You don't interrogate people specially because of the rights they intend to exercise," said Denise Provost, an alderman-at-large.

Most of the out-of-state couples who applied for licenses said they had never been to Somerville before -- some said they had never heard of Somerville -- but that they learned over the Internet, by reading newspapers online or visiting gay-themed websites -- that city officials there were willing to marry them.

Robin Goldman, 34, and Cris Beam, 32, of Manhattan, came up to Massachusetts on the Chinatown-to-Chinatown bus Sunday afternoon. "As soon as we heard this would be possible, we made plans to come here," said Beam, a writer.

Goldman, a scientist, said the couple plan to attempt to exercise rights associated with marriage in New York -- to file joint taxes, to seek family health insurance, and to file for name changes -- and that "if we hit a problem, we'll deal with it."


© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[cookie]

Congratulations to all the newly married! I hope my state soon recognizes these marriages.

I was listening to NPR this morning and there was a quote from a guy who was in one of the courtrooms who they interviewed who came up with the old canard "It's gonna be difficult for their children in school. Why would they do that to their kids?"

Well, if people would get over their bigotry, the kids wouldn't have any worries.

In my town, homosexuality is tolerated more than in some places. In our schools, there are support programs for the children of gays (and at our high-school, for gay children).

The only children who will hassle the children of gays at school are the children of bigots. It is the bigots who need changing, not the gays. Live and let live.

Anyway, this is a huge moment in the gay rights movement and I hope it's momentum continues. There is no civil reason to refuse these people the right to marry, IMO.

As far as an amendment "protecting" male/female marriage is concerned, I don't think (and certainly hope) it will come to fruition despite the squeaky wheels who are making all the noise. I was encouraged by a NYT article that said that there is more tolerance for gay marriage among rank and file American Christians than many had anticipated.

Maybe some people *do* get it.

[Tanager]

Cookie, I read what I believe to be that same article, and I didn't read it as reporting so much "tolerance" as a "lesser sense of urgency than religious leaders had expected" among their flocks. The majority surveyed still oppose gay marriages, they just don't seem to feel it's important enough to merit real action on their part - at least that's the way I read it. Even if they aren't exactly tolerant, it's nice to think they might have more perspective than the loudmouthed hotheads.

I think this is great, and I wish all the best to each of the happy couples.

[cookie]

Tanager: thanks. I believe that is a more accurate picture of what the article said. I had indeed read another article that suggested that many evangelical Christians, while personally believing homosexuality to be sinful, believe that it is not and should not be made a civil issue (and btw, I'm encouraged by that).

However, I do believe you're right, that the NYT article played up the aspect that there are more important and pressing issues that attract more energy.

I say good, because there *are* more pressing issues. Someday, it may not be an issue at all. People freaked out over things like women wearing pants, too. Now, nobody really raises an eyebrow except for certain hardcore fundies who believe that it's immodest for women to wear pants.

Bad analogy, I know. I just think that people---including those who find it morally reprehensible---will get used to it.

"They're here. They're queer. Get used to it."

[Enforcer]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

Oops! sorry about the typo in the title. Didn't mean to imply an endorsement of Triple Sec as the official toasting drink of the gay-marriage movement.

[Mone, can you fix it?]

Don't count on help from the Resident Techie, GG. He left the seizure inducing eyesore of a typo, "behaviortreatment," in the title of another thread *just* to spite me. So when he reads this and decides to leave the typo the way it is, because he "kinda likes it," don't be surprised.

Awaiting banishment by an angry god,
Larry

[cookie]

Typos are one thing. I ought to be fined 50 yards for atrocious grammar!