Marriage Equality Works

BOSTON - Every year, the couples who led the fight for gay marriage in Massachusetts get together privately to celebrate both their own weddings and the marriages of thousands more couples who followed them.

But this year, the celebration feels a little bit sweeter for the six couples who will gather Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of Massachusetts becoming the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. This year, they will also be celebrating the legalization of gay marriage in four other states.

“We’ve been very happy that it’s started to be accepted in other places,” said Maureen Brodoff, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to a Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing gay marriage.

“It’s important to us that same-sex relationships get recognition outside of our home state, and I think that that is happening slowly as people look to the Massachusetts example and see that, you know, the sky didn’t fall, that it’s strengthened families, that it’s brought joy to a lot of families,” Brodoff said.

Brodoff married her longtime partner, Ellen Wade, on May 17, 2004, the first day same-sex couples were allowed to marry.

Since then, more than 12,350 same-sex couples have married in Massachusetts, out of slightly more than 172,000 marriages in the state, according to the latest figures, which run through September 2008.

Opponents say they remain concerned that gay marriage will have a negative effect on children and religious freedom.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, points to a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Lexington parents who objected to gay families being discussed in their children’s elementary school classrooms.

A federal appeals court dismissed the lawsuit, saying the inclusion of books that included gay people or relationships did not violate the parents’ First Amendment right to free exercise or religion.

Mineau also cited the 2006 decision by the Boston Archdiocese’s Catholic Charities to stop providing adoption services because state law required it to consider same-sex parents when looking for adoptive homes.

“These are foretelling events,” Mineau said. “We’ve always said it’s going to take a generation for the full impact of this radical social experiment to take effect, but there are certainly these telling signs.”

The couples who led the fight to legalize gay marriage say their unions have been just like anyone else’s. They raise children together, they buy homes together and they have their share of problems. One of the seven couples who brought the landmark lawsuit is now in the midst of a divorce. Julie and Hillary Goodridge filed for divorce in February after separating in 2006.

Another one of the couples, Rob Compton and David Wilson, said they have watched over the past five years as acceptance in their community has grown. Between them, they have five adult children from previous marriages, and six grandchildren under the age of 10.

“Once people started telling their personal stories, it really has changed the perception of what gay and lesbian couples look like, how they behave, how important they are to the families they’re in,” Wilson said.

Compton said he’s been surprised by how quickly other states have accepted same-sex marriage. Connecticut, Iowa, Maine and Vermont have all legalized gay marriage this spring. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch said this week that he will sign a bill to make his state the sixth state if lawmakers revise it to strengthen protections for churches opposed to gay marriage.

Five years ago, Compton said, part of the debate in other states was whether to grant civil unions — as Vermont had already done — or marriage to same-sex couples.

“But what’s happening today is that the default position is no longer civil unions … it’s now moving to — maybe we should consider marriage,” he said.

“We started the dialogue and then people picked it up and moved it across the states,” he said. “But it needed to start somewhere.”

By DENISE LAVOIE | Associated Press Writer
10:31 AM CDT, May 16, 2009

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