It seems a lifetime ago, and by some measurements it was. Twenty years ago on May 17, as joyous Massachusetts gay and lesbian couples began marrying shortly after midnight, President George W. Bush reiterated his call for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages.
The day was a study in contrasts, and perhaps a prelude of today’s divided country. While thousands of people filled the Boston city hall plaza that bright spring morning, most of them cheering the victorious plaintiff couples in Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health — the groundbreaking lawsuit that led to that day’s first legal weddings — there were police everywhere, including sharpshooters on rooftops reminding us of the controversy surrounding the joy.
For while Massachusetts was making national and international news, 38 states had already taken steps to ban marriage equality. Six more states would consider referendums outlawing gay marriage on their November ballots. Political analysts would later say that President Bush’s re-election was aided in no small part by those marriage referendums in key states.
That’s not surprising because in 2004, six out of 10 Americans opposed legalizing same sex marriage according to Gallup polling. In 2024, Massachusetts has an openly gay governor in Maura Healey, and Gallup reports 70 per cent of Americans support marriage equality, including 55 per cent of Republicans. A sea change by any calculation.
And while then Gov. Mitt Romney tried everything to stop gay marriages, including invoking a 1913 statute that was originally used to block out-of-state mixed-race couples from marrying here, Boston Mayor Tom Menino delighted in welcoming the plaintiff couples to city hall where they collected their marriage licenses. Mayor Menino would later say it was one of the proudest moments of his long tenure.
Martha’s Vineyard enjoys a very prominent tie to these first marriages: the author of that historic 2003 decision was Margaret H. Marshall, then the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the first woman to lead the court. At the time, she was an Island regular, often in residence at home in West Tisbury with her late husband, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.
In fact, as anxious lawyers, plaintiffs, politicians and the public at large were waiting for the court’s decision, everyone had a theory of when the ruling would drop. My personal favorite was the clarion call that went out because Justice Marshall was spotted on the ferry returning one Tuesday morning. Clearly, the decision would be released that day or the next. Nope. Not happening.
Justice Marshall has said she wrote about 300 opinions during her 14 years on the bench, many of them drafted on the Island. But her legacy is cemented in her four-to-three majority opinion, which made it unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the rights and privileges associated with marriage.
It would take a dozen more years, filled with countless lawsuits, ballot questions and statehouse battles before the United States Supreme Court would take up the case, ruling in a five-to-four decision to grant federal access to marriage across the country to loving, same-sex couples.
Justice Marshall’s decision was cited in that 2015 landmark case and one particular passage remains a popular reading at weddings, both gay and straight: “Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that expresses our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision of whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”
Twenty years ago, I was handling press for the seven plaintiff couples and GLAD, the LGBTQ+ legal organization which brought the Goodridge lawsuit. None of them had planned to marry on May 17, but when it became clear that the hordes of press wanted — or let me rephrase that — demanded to see weddings that very first day, let’s just say those wedding plans changed.
The one unexpected question I got? What were the named plaintiffs, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, wearing at their wedding that day? Armani pant suits, I learned and spouted back to an energized and vocal press corps.
I was too busy beating back legislative attempts to derail the Goodridge decision to get married in 2004. Initially, I viewed my pending 2005 marriage to Rebecca (Becky) Haag as a political necessity because the state was keeping track of the numbers and we had to do our part and be counted.
But then somehow, that day in June arrived with 70 or so gathered in our Chilmark backyard. And I got it. Marriage is so much more than the legal and financial protections it provides. It is a universal language of sorts that everyone, friend or foe, acknowledges when you say, we’re married or I introduce Becky as my wife.
I just had one more question as our marriage day was ending because our wedding was a ton of work. We were still stripping leaves off daises and planting them in vases that morning. I mean how do people do this? To which came the quick reply from the back of the room: “Mary, most people hire a wedding planner and don’t count on their gay boyfriends to save the day.”
Fair enough but, my goodness, it was perfect.
Mary Breslauer, a former managing editor of the Gazette, lives with her wife, Rebecca Haag, in Chilmark.
