Normal now has a new definition in this state which went ahead with same-sex weddings after a last-minute emergency appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.
This city of intellectuals and uber-liberals that raced to be the first to usher in legal gay marriage put on a raucous celebration, replete with a brass band playing Dixie, American flags and impromptu renditions of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “This Land Is Your Land,” all on the cramped front lawn of the Cambridge City Hall. (Though San Francisco issued same-sex marriage certificates three months earlier, the certificates have yet to be recognized by the state’s courts.) “I’m so proud to be from Massachusetts right now,” said Allan Telio, 26, who held up a sign with his girlfriend, Katie Britton, 25, that said, THIS STRAIGHT COUPLE SUPPORTS SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. As a squad of riot police cleared a path through the crowd on the steps of Cambridge City Hall before midnight, Telio, who wore in his ear a sprig of lavender given to him by someone in the crowd, shouted, “Way to go, guys! Go get married!”
More than 250 couples waited for hours in front of City Hall Sunday night, blowing bubbles and enduring the rain and cold, before Mayor Michael Sullivan opened the building’s doors to them at 10:30 p.m. to let them take a number and go back to waiting, this time for the clock to strike 12:01 a.m. Some feasted on the endless supply of wedding cake. Some went to the council chamber to listen to a guitarist play romantic tunes like “Besame Mucho.” Others settled down along the stairwell, which was festooned with white lace and purple bows. Some wore tuxes, a few wore all leather ensembles or rainbow-covered clothing, but most wore everyday clothes and spoke simply of the joys of being able to attain the same legal status and rights as their heterosexual peers. “We can finally tell our kids that we’re a legal couple,” said Jean Vieira, a 35-year-old nursing assistant who on Friday will marry Rhonda Hicks, a 37-year-old kennel manager. Hicks wore a white carnation in her ear and held up for the crowd a small certificate, which promises a marriage certificate after a three-day waiting period. “We’ll invite them all to the wedding,” Hicks said. “And we’ll invite Mitt Romney,” Vieira said, referring to the state’s befuddled Republican governor, who resorted to an arcane 1913 law to bar out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. Romney had new forms drawn up that ask couples to swear, under penalty of perjury, that if they do not live in Massachusetts they intend to move here. A handful of communities have vowed to defy Romney, and at least three of the state’s district attorneys have balked at prosecuting local officials who do not enforce the residency requirement.
In the council chamber on the third floor, Mayor Sullivan rattled off numbers five at a time that gave couples the signal to head for the 10-minute processing on the bottom floor. Waiting couples’ cheers and whistles reverberated throughout the historic building. Cambridge was the only city to open for business at midnight; the rest of the state’s cities and towns had normal business hours. After getting their licenses, many couples headed home for a short night’s sleep before appearing before judges in the morning to ask for waivers to the state’s three-day waiting period so they could marry immediately.
Some had already participated in commitment or religious ceremonies, and wanted only the blessing of the state. But for anyone in need of an open-minded church, a Unitarian Universalist Association congregation from Boston was decked out in tuxes and gowns, handing out brochures to same-sex couples. They promised that wedding expenses, from the organist to the flowers, would be covered by congregants at the First Parish Church in the section of Dorchester–the only catch being a premarital counseling requirement. “There’s not a Unitarian Universalist minister who would not be delighted to perform marriages for same-sex couples,” said William Sinkford, national president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which also worked for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery.
Not everyone in the crowd was cheering on the newly married couples. About 100 audacious protesters–dwarfed by the estimated 10,000 gay marriage supporters–stood across the street holding derogatory protest signs declaring God’s hatred of same-sex couples. One gay marriage supporter, 49-year-old writer Michael Harrington of Cambridge, crossed the street to engage Josh Phelps Roper, a 19-year-old computer engineering student. “It’s all about love,” Harrington said. “You’re ignoring the Bible,” responded Phelps Roper, who had traveled from Topeka, Kan., as most of the protesters did.
Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley, a strong opponent of gay marriage, has pleaded with Catholics to refrain from angry protests, and the Massachusetts Family Institute, which led the opposition’s lobbying effort at the statehouse, planned none for today. “We’ll let them have their day,” said Kristian Mineau, the group’s acting president, who predicted that the same-sex marriages would galvanize support for a federal amendment banning them. Gay marriage supporters, on the other hand, say the weddings will prove that they pose no threat to anyone.
Some of them, like Andy Howarth, a 44-year-old ceramics designer, shook the Boston Statehouse with their chants and songs in March and February, during the tumultuous constitutional convention that eventually led to an amendment that bans gay marriage and creates civil unions The amendment must be passed again by the legislature next year before the public can vote on it in 2006, which casts into doubt the future legality of any same-sex couple who marries between now and then. But Howarth was focused on the present. “To live through that and then see this is just amazing,” he said, indicating the throngs of couples awaiting marriage certificates.
One couple–Paul McMahon, 71, and Ralph Hogdon, 69–who carried a sign that read “49 Years Together” and bouquets of flowers given to them by strangers in the crowd, said they planned to marry on May 29, the 50th anniversary of the day the two met in New York’s Central Park. McMahon spoke of the couple’s struggle to find a landlord willing to rent to two men who aroused suspicion because they weren’t students when they moved to Boston in 1960. “I never even fantasized about marriage,” McMahon said. “Going to other people’s weddings, I always thought they were so beautiful, and I never thought about having one of my own.” Now, 50 years after meeting the man he described as “the love of my life,” he will finally get his chance.
