Ten years ago this week, Massachetts beme the first state to legalize gay marriage. Attorney Mary Bonto, one of the key drivers of the change, is a quiet, unassumg mother of two om Mae.
Contents:
- 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'
- TODAY IN HISTORY: 12 YEARS SCE MASSACHETTS BEME FIRST STATE TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE
- FORMER MASS. CHIEF JTICE ON LIFE, LIBERTY AND GAY MARRIAGE
- REFLECTG ON MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC GAY RIGHTS LG, 15 YEARS LATER: ANALYSIS
- MASSACHETTS GAY MARRIAGE DECISN
- MASSACHETTS’ GAY MARRIAGE BILL IS NOW LAW
- GAY MARRIAGE MASSACHETTS
15 YEARS LATER, GAY UPLE RELLS THEIR ROLE MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC MARRIAGE LG
Laws, s, and web sourc on gay marriage. * massachusetts gay marriage case *
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.
LAWYER REFLECTS ON NATN'S FIRST GAY MARRIAG: 'THE CAGE HAD BEEN LIFTED'
* massachusetts gay marriage case *
A legal gui for lbian and gay upl by Frerick Hertz, Nolo, 2020. 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.
TODAY IN HISTORY: 12 YEARS SCE MASSACHETTS BEME FIRST STATE TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE
Wh s upg cisns on same-sex marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court fac the same qutn that Margaret Marshall faced a ago as Massachetts' chief jtice. Marshall says she had ltle ia that the cisn she wrote legalizg gay marriage would be groundbreakg. * massachusetts gay marriage case *
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.
FORMER MASS. CHIEF JTICE ON LIFE, LIBERTY AND GAY MARRIAGE
The hight urt Massachetts l that, most s, gay and lbian partners om out of state are not wele to marry Massachetts, which has legalized gay marriage for -state partners. Neal Conan leads a discsn. * massachusetts gay marriage case *
But gay uple Robert Compton and David Wilson, now happily married, n still remember how they cried when they heard the news. 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.
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. In a historic opn on November 18, 2003, GLAD won a lg om the Massachetts Supreme Judicial Court that gay and lbian upl n no longer be exclud om civil marriage rights Massachetts. 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.
REFLECTG ON MASSACHETTS' HISTORIC GAY RIGHTS LG, 15 YEARS LATER: ANALYSIS
Massachetts' hight urt last month led a 4-3 cisn that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unnstutnal and orred the state legislature to e up wh a solutn wh 180 days. The state's lg has brought the legal and polil bate over gay marriage to the natnal level.. * massachusetts gay marriage case *
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. 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. "At the same time, I felt that simply allowg gay people to ntue to suffer was not acceptable.
MASSACHETTS GAY MARRIAGE DECISN
Perhaps nowhere more so than at the Massachetts Statehoe, where opponents were phg for a nstutnal ban on gay marriage. But setbacks ntued as well, like when voters nixed gay marriage Mae, where Bonto was livg wh her wife and tw girls. He lls Bonto astute and profsnal, but says her legal arguments, which he nsirs flty, laid the foundatn for what he lls today's "tolerance for anyone who dar oppose gay marriage.
For her part, Bonto dismiss suggtns that a new orthodoxy on gay marriage leav no room for dissent. Rather, she says, opponents simply lost steam once gay marriag started to happen. As she puts , gay marriage is actually the bt se for gay marriage.
MASSACHETTS’ GAY MARRIAGE BILL IS NOW LAW
Recently, some wh the gay muny have been tslg over who the movement's te hero are. Same-sex upl n marry 17 stat and the District of Columbia, but still, there are more stat where gay upl are not allowed to marry than where they are.
Hillary, left, and Julie Goodridge, lead platiffs the landmark Massachetts gay marriage lawsu receive their weddg rgs om their dghter, Annie, 8, as Unarian Rev. William Skford pris over their marriage ceremony Boston durg the first day of state-sanctned gay marriage the Uned Stat Monday, May 17, 2004.
GAY MARRIAGE MASSACHETTS
Legalizg gay marriage did more than rg weddg bells-- changed the landspe of acceptance and equaly for all Massachetts cizens. In 2014, 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.