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Cambridge Massachusetts, May 24, 2004

Greetings from the great state of Massachusetts, home of same-sex legally married couples from the Tip of the Cape to the Top of the Berkshires! As of May 24, 2004, one week from M-Day May 17, over 1700 same-sex couples have obtained marriage licenses in Massachusetts. Despite all of the thunder and roar from Governor Mitt Romney, about 98% of those couples reside in our state.

The past seven days have been exhilarating, exhausting, exciting and extremely extraordinary. I keep pinching myself so that I know I'm not dreaming. Here in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the unfolding of a historic and seismic cultural shift. Every queer person I talk to agrees: our world changed on May 17 and the evidence of it keeps rolling in the door. But, let me set the stage for the seismic cultural shift by taking you to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For 20 years, LGBT people in the city of Cambridge have worked steadily to create a community that is welcoming to people who are sexual and gender minorities. In a series of local ordinances and school department policies, the city has embraced its LGBT residents and visitors. The ordinances and policies include: a 1984 local ordinance to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, a 1991 ordinance to establish domestic partner status for city workers and residents so that employee benefits would be available to unmarried partners of employees, a 1996 amendment to the non-discrimination law to include gender expression, the establishment of a liaison position in our school department to LGBT families, the establishment of the nation's second high school-based support group for LGBT students and allies, and the appointment of a liaison in the city's police department.

When the decision in Goodridge was announced in November 2003, a Cambridge City Councilor immediately took steps to bypass the 180-day waiting period for the issuance of marriage licenses to s-s couples. She proposed that the city of Cambridge would commence issuing licenses as soon as our City Clerk could prepare to do so. But under advice from a number of sources, the City Councilor withdrew her proposal and settled for issuance of licenses - as soon as is legally permissible, aligning the city with May 17, 2004 as M-Day in Cambridge and other communities across the state.

Many of us who have worked with our city leaders to enact ordinances and public policies listed above began to dream of clerks' offices all over the state throwing open their doors at 12:01 AM on M-Day. We wanted it to begin with Cambridge, of course, so set about to secure the commitment from the city leaders to issue licenses "as soon as is legally permissible." With only token resistance to the idea offered, the city elected officials and its management staff threw their shoulders to the wheel to plan and host an event, "Cambridge Celebrates Marriage Equality." (As it happened, only the city of Cambridge, of all the 351 municipalities in the state, opened at 12:01 AM on May 17, to huge media fanfare and attention.)

The first city agency to throw out a red carpet was the Cambridge Health Department. The chief public health officer set special evening hours for premarital blood testing at the largest of the city's health clinics. About 80 blood tests were administered in the course of six evenings of special hours. My girlfriend and I obtained our blood tests, arriving at the clinic expecting a quick and relatively dry, even bloodless, experience awaited us. Ha! This is Cambridge and I was wrong. Exuberant staff at the clinic who couldn't have been more gleeful had the Boston Red Sox won the World Series greeted my lover and me. Our hands were shaken many times; we received "congrats" and "mazel tovs"; we were offered cheese and crackers and juice; we were treated by the staff with respect and care and good wishes. We departed the clinic saying to each other that a visit to get lab work done had never been so...well, so happy-making.

Weeks of planning went into Cambridge Celebrates Marriage Equality, with the City Manager and his staff procuring donated wedding cakes, devising plans for media, for disseminating needed information to couples that would apply for licenses, and for handling a crowd that would be larger than the City Hall could possibly accommodate. The Mayor of Cambridge and colleagues on the City Council produced a program of music and speeches to mark the final 60 minutes of marriage discrimination and to usher in a new era of equality under the law for our families.

Plans made, the day arrived, and the people came out for equality.

Commencing at 12:01 AM on Sunday May 16, gay and lesbian and bisexual people, eager to take advantage of our hard-won freedom to legally marry, began to assemble at Cambridge City Hall. Admittedly, it took about 20 hours for a crowd of discernible size to gather, but there were three of us who took extra pains to arrive early and secure the important first position in line.

I was the recruiter and the advisor to Cambridge's Couple Number One, Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd, the first couple in Massachusetts and the nation to "take intentions" at 12:01 AM May 17 at Cambridge City Hall. Marcia, Susan and I spent Saturday night/Sunday morning sitting in beach chairs and huddling under sleeping bags in the rain on the front steps of Cambridge City Hall because our city leaders had announced a first come/first served policy. I was committed to Marcia and Susan being Couple Number One and so we claimed and held their first position. Marcia and Susan, being old political hands and very enthusiastic about exercising their right to marry, were good sports about our night out in the drizzle and they did a wonderful job with the media, working steadily for about 36 hours with little sleep.

Couple Number Two was none other than me and my gal, but we deflected media away from us and on to Marcia and Susan. Nonetheless, playing Avis to their Hertz was my reward for camping out with Couple Number One at City Hall.

The event at Cambridge City Hall was flawless: 10,000 people at its largest cheering wildly for 266 couples taking intentions; a beaming cast and crew of city leaders and city workers, all of whom were extremely proud to be, once again, the first city in Commonwealth to open wide its arms to gay and lesbian and bisexual people. Cake, sparkling cider, congratulations were rained upon us. City Hall stayed open until 4:30 AM in order that all 266 couples could take intentions at the historic moment of first access to the freedom to marry. The City Hall staff worked long and hard and with great dedication to make the occasion of first legal marriages in Massachusetts sweet for all.

Beginning at 9:15 AM on May 17, 2004 with the first couple married at Cambridge City Hall, same-sex couples are now married all over the state. Happiness mixed with disbelief is on everyones lips, as in "We are so happy to be able to be legally married, and we never thought this day would come."

In addition to the obvious and clarifying benefits of living under the protections of the laws of our state-and in due time, the laws of our country-to what dynamic do we owe this state of blissful disbelief for the thousands of gay and lesbian and bisexual people who are getting married?

Earlier I wrote of a seismic cultural shift that is sweeping through our state. Perhaps people in San Francisco and Portland also felt the earth move in this way when thousands of same-sex couples, heretofore shut out of legal equality, declared themselves for each other, as long as they both shall live. But I know that I and others certainly feel it here. But what is it that has happened? As headlines and editorial writers attest, the sky has not fallen. As politicians promised, the milk did not sour in all the refrigerators in the state. As pundits predicted, not a single heterosexual marriage came unglued as a result of gay marriages being performed. So what is it then? How has life changed utterly and unalterably?

We queerfolk are learning the common cultural language of marriage, wedding, relationship, family-making that until this moment we were barred from learning. A perfect example: my girlfriend and I and two dyke friends are having dinner together this past Saturday night. Kids are with sitters and after a long week of exhausting life at history's watershed, we are relaxed. Chatting each other up, naturally, about all aspects of marriage, including our friends plans for their wedding. The waiter, a young man of 25 or so, joins our chat, congratulating us all on this important moment, but also sharing details of his upcoming wedding. One of us inquires, "Are you marrying a boy or a girl?" Not a beat is skipped, "Girl," he answers. Wedding chat continues, but I am stunned by what has just occured. Four lesbians have casually exchanged information, observations, light humor, and plans for weddings with a young straight man and each of us is pleased as punch. Back in the early days of second wave feminism, this was called a "click," a sudden jolt of realization and recognition of one's status as a woman in a sexist society. Well, click me, honey, cuz I feel a sudden jolt of realization and recognition of my newly changed status as a queer in a heterosexist society that is beginning to lay down its arms and declare a permanent ceasefire in the war against gay and lesbian and bisexual people.

This is it. This is the beginning of the end of legally sanctioned discrimination against our people and it is the end of the beginning of our long struggle against official and unofficial homohatred, the closet, and all of the ways that our lives have been defined by oppression.

It used to be said of our love that we dared not speak its name. Now we can speak its name and discuss it in the same context and language and cultural forms as our straight neighbors, friends, and siblings. What had been not understandable because our descriptions of it were coded, tribal, secretive, and kept out of sight, is now comprehensible in the same way that all longterm, intimate, committed relationships are comprehensible and even commonplace. Oh, you're married. Or, oh, are you getting married? Or, when is the Big Day?

Whether we choose to or not, whether we hunger for the common language of marriage or not, we are now allowed to participate in the cultural rituals of adult, intimate relationships in the same ways that others can. The outlaws are in-laws. This is the seismic shift. I and everyone I know who lives in Massachusetts describe the biggest coming out event of recorded history. Most people who live here are really really happy about it. Not our Governor, not Ron Crews and the Massachusetts Family Institute, not the Archbishop of Boston. They are very much not happy about it. But the regular people who witness a wedding at the City Hall front lawn and see two people declare their love and devotion, the 10,000 and more who came to Cambridge City Hall to celebrate, the 351 city clerks in our state and the people who work with them, they are all happy about gay marriage because they are happy about marriage.

Our kids are really happy about it because for them, their families count now, just like everybody else's families count.

I, too, never thought this day would come in my lifetime. The year is 2004, 35 years after Stonewall, an event that I read about as an isolated and lonely teenaged dyke in a small town in Illinois, and now, my lover and I can be legally married with the support and keen interest of our children, our close friends and family members and the entire community of Cambridge Massachusetts. Huh?! How did that happen so fast?

Here is how: it happened because of our movement's own hard work, dedication and determination that every dream, every aspiration, every hope of every queer to live free of oppression is ennobling and worthy of fulfillment.

Sue Hyde has worked with the Task Force since 1986.

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The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the political power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from the ground up. We do this by training activists, organizing broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and by building the organizational capacity of our movement. Our Policy Institute, the movement’s premier think tank, provides research and policy analysis to support the struggle for complete equality and to counter right-wing lies. As part of a broader social justice movement, we work to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., we also have offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis and Cambridge.