Lookg back at the legalizatn of gay marriage Mass. - The Boston Globe

Contents:

• TODAY IN HISTORY: 12 YEARS SCE MASSACHETTS BEME FIRST STATE TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE
• REFLECTG ON MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC GAY RIGHTS LG, 15 YEARS LATER: ANALYSIS
• 15 YEARS LATER, GAY UPLE RELLS THEIR ROLE MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC MARRIAGE LG
• LAWYER REFLECTS ON NATN'S FIRST GAY MARRIAG: 'THE CAGE HAD BEEN LIFTED'
• GAY MARRIAGE
• HOW DID GAY MARRIAGE HAPPEN MASSACHETTS FIRST?
• LOOKG BACK AT THE LEGALIZATN OF GAY MARRIAGE MASS.
• TEN YEARS AGO, MASSACHETTS TRODUCED TO GAY MARRIAGE

TODAY IN HISTORY: 12 YEARS SCE MASSACHETTS BEME FIRST STATE TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE

Legalizg gay marriage did more than rg weddg bells-- changed the landspe of acceptance and equaly for all Massachetts cizens. Adam Reilly wrote about how Massachetts ma gay policians mastream: om Charlie Baker mpaigng wh his openly gay brother, to Mra Healey beg elected to Attorney General ltle notice of her sexualy. Meno is remembered as a rock star of the LGBT muny, and many nsir him pivotal the legalizatn of gay marriage:On Monday, May 17, 2004, Meno proudly rted the lead platiffs Goodridge v.

REFLECTG ON MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC GAY RIGHTS LG, 15 YEARS LATER: ANALYSIS

Supreme Court revved up to take on the nstutnaly of gay marriage. om same-sex upl Massachetts that uld prove legalizg gay marriage would posively affect the liv of Amerins. Before gay marriage beme legal natnally, many bs stepped up to ensure protectns for the LGBT muny.

Supreme Court pass gay marriage on June 26, 2015! Legal scholar Kenji Yosho spoke to WGBH News' Morng Edn on the role that Massachetts played the Supreme Court's cisn to legalize gay marriage:When Massachetts had same sex marriage…. Massachetts' "gay marriage" cisn.

Hog and mortgag for gay and lbian upl, Mortgage. How to get married Massachetts, Gay and Lbian Advot and Defenrs (GLAD), July 2015. A legal gui for lbian and gay upl by Frerick Hertz, Nolo, 2020.

15 YEARS LATER, GAY UPLE RELLS THEIR ROLE MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC MARRIAGE LG

Lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr fay law, Thomson Rters, Annual.

Morn fai: effective advocy for lbian and gay clients, MCLE, 2013. The road to marriage equaly began April 2001 when Gay and Lbian Advot and Defenrs, a nonprof group of attorneys that works on LBGTQIA+ issu, started a su agast the Massachetts Department of Public Health on behalf of seven gay and lbian upl who had been nied marriage licens. Michelle Johnson and Myrna Greenfield joed dozens of other same-sex upl to be married the night gay marriage was legalized Massachetts.

The fact that they liv a state wh legalized gay marriage ma a difference. “I have been really pleasantly surprised at how differently people treat you when you're officially married and how eager and willg people have been to wele gay people to the fold, ” said Myrna Greenfield, Johnson’s wife. A first csh of 41 upl led up the middle of the night to be the first gays and lbians to be legally married the Uned Stat, wh some of the platiffs the urt se gettg ont-of-the-le scene was jubilant.

LAWYER REFLECTS ON NATN'S FIRST GAY MARRIAG: 'THE CAGE HAD BEEN LIFTED'

A small group of protters was drowned out by an exuberant crowd of gay activists and cur lols who had gathered unr the brightly l ancient bell tower Central Square to wns 15 years’ remove om that moment, ’s difficult to remember how uncerta all a few months earlier, San Francis Mayor Gav Newsom had orred that marriage licens be issued to gay upl – only to have the California Supreme Court later validate them and the marriag that had been the Whe Hoe, Print Gee W. Bh lled the Massachetts urt lg “eply troublg” and voiced support for a nstutnal amendment to ban gay marriage Massachetts, Republin Gov.

Romney would not make easy for gay upl; among other burecratic obstacl, he voked a 90-year-old state law that had been wrten to block terracial marriage to prevent same-sex upl om other stat om g to the Bay State to men wearg wa outsi Town Hall, where same-sex upl om across the untry gathered May 17, 2004, Provcetown, Mass. Allowg gay upl to marry wasn’t a mastream posn eher polil party back John Kerry – then a senator om Massachetts, and the Democratic printial nomee 2004 – opposed gay marriage throughout his mpaign, favorg civil unns stead, what was viewed as a progrsive posn at the time. A full printial cycle later, ndidate Barack Obama and his nng mate, Joe Bin, opposed natnwi gay marriage favor of civil unns.

GAY MARRIAGE

I am not favor of gay marriage, ” Obama said November 2008 – on the eve of his would take another four years -- and fully eight years after weddg bells first chimed for same-sex upl Massachetts -- before Bin pronounced himself fortable wh gay marriage. Obama – then nng for reelectn – followed su, acknowledgg an “evolutn” on the issue an terview wh ABC News’ Rob Roberts that ma him the first print to support gay upl fill out qutns about rincy on their applitn forms as they apply for marriage licens at the Cy Clerk's office Northampton, Mass., May 17, Jimenez/Getty Imag, FILEEven at that time, 2012, gay marriage was legal only six stat pl the District of Columbia.

The landmark Supreme Court se tablishg a fundamental right to marry me 2015 – effectively endg a polil bate ma more urgent on those urthoe steps 11 years, 2019, an openly gay printial ndidate has been featured on the ver of Time magaze alongsi his hband. The Republin print he might n agast said, jt this week, he thks “’s great” that a married gay man is a pure historil cince, May 2004 Pete Buttigieg was an unrgrad at Harvard – the very cy, Cambridge, where the midnight marriage licens were issued.

I wish I uld ask them now if they fd even more remarkable that the polics around gay marriage have moved as quickly as they have sce that day. "We jt wanted to make sure that the world saw the most posive si of beg a gay uple. But gay uple Robert Compton and David Wilson, now happily married, n still remember how they cried when they heard the news.

HOW DID GAY MARRIAGE HAPPEN MASSACHETTS FIRST?

They me out late, and were exced to get a new start on they met 1997 at a nventn for gay fathers Boston, there was an stant nnectn.

LOOKG BACK AT THE LEGALIZATN OF GAY MARRIAGE MASS.

They ma their vows durg a mment ceremony at Boston’s Arlgton Street Church 2000 ont of iends and 2001, the Massachetts-based gay rights anizatn Gay and Lbian Advot and Defenrs, or GLAD, asked the pair to be a part of the Goodridge lawsu. The uple relled anti-gay-marriage protters outsi the urthoe wavg picket signs wh hateful slogans like “God hat fags. “When you actually started to see your fay, iends, neighbors get married and live their liv, and see jt how siar our fai are to other married fai, really started to stroy the wall of myths that our opponents had tried to create around the alleged negative effects of marriage equaly, bee was there person, right ont of you, ” Silva, three years after the Supreme Court's 2015 cisn legalizg same-sex marriage across the natn — and 15 years after Massachetts did so for s rints — two three Amerins support gay marriage, acrdg to a recent Gallup days, marriage equaly feels more or ls normal to Wilson and Compton, who will celebrate their 15th anniversary broar fight for LGBTQ equaly, however, ntu, warned Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, a natnal LGBTQ rights group.

Warbelow also poted to recent bills Kansas and Oklahoma that would give fah-based adoptn agenci the abily to ny adoptn to gay and lbian upl.

It had been six months sce her arguments had persuad Massachetts' hight urt to allow the natn's first legal gay marriag, but opponents were still tryg to stop the weddgs before they started. Early Fights Barney Frank, an openly gay former ngrsman, lls Bonto "the LGBT muny's equivalent of Thurgood Marshall" — a brilliant polil strategist for the way she methodilly built the se for gay marriage, one state at a time. Almost immediately after she began workg 1990 for the gay advocy group GLAD (Gay and Lbian Advot and Defenrs) Boston, clients started askg Bonto to sue for gay marriage.

TEN YEARS AGO, MASSACHETTS TRODUCED TO GAY MARRIAGE

Bonto wh Edward Balmelli and Michael Han, platiffs the landmark se that legalized gay marriage Massachetts. ' You uldn't e 'gay people' and 'civil rights' the same sentence.

" In that ntext, Bonto says, gay marriage was a pipe dream. By the late 1990s, after seeg an almost-w for gay marriage Hawaii and gettg her own almost-w Vermont (that end civil unns stead of marriage), Bonto was ready to go for Massachetts.