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May 17, 2004
Modern Love
Three blocks from Girl-E's apartment is the Cambridge, Massachusetts City Hall. Until tonight, Cambridge has been known primarily as the home of Harvard, MIT, and the original Necco Wafer factory. But tonight, Cambridge, Massachusetts made another kind of history-- at 12:01am, clerks at the City Hall issued the first honest to goodness legal marriage license to a lesbian couple in the United States of America.
According to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, gay and lesbian marriage would be legal in the Commonwealth six months to the day after its November 17th ruling. Cities and towns in Massachusetts are gearing up for 8:00am, when thousands of gay and lesbian couples will eagerly await equality under the law. Except for Cambridge, which said screw 8:00am-- May 17th means May 17th, means midnight. Girl-E, Nikita, hundreds of other people, and at least that many reporters and photographers flocked to the lawn in front of City Hall to celebrate the couples, many of whom had been waiting decades for the moment, who walked through the doors with 3-day post-blood test waiting period wavers in hand (as if a required blood test for rubella and syphallis isn't stupid enough for straight couples). There were dancing troupes. There were tubas. There were people on roller blades. And there was enough pure joy in the air to kill the most hideous of maneating beasts.
It was a glorious event, to say the least. Even the people with the "Fags Doom Nations" signs shrunk back when the first couple emerged from the City Hall doors. The celebration at Boston City Hall in the afternoon will be equally rockin', roses and birdseed abounding. Even though the wheels are in motion to invalidate these licenses with a popular vote by 2006, we can't imagine that a majority of Massachusetts citizens, after witnessing two years of this kind of good, would elect to take it away.
A loud, crying, laughing, jumping, raucus benediction to one and all.
Note: Pictures are a'comin', just have a little patience. Like the couple of 27 years who waited at the hall 24 hours in advance to make sure they were the first in line.
Posted by The Twins at May 17, 2004 01:24 AM
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Comments
i couldn't believe it when i read it, but it turns out that TODAY is the 50 year anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (desegregating schools). amazing, and wonderful.
Posted by: bryan at May 17, 2004 01:06 PM
The funny thing is that school desegregation has for years been my other academic and political specialty, and I've done a bunch of work this year about the 50th anniversary of Brown. And yet I am so much more psyched about this (mostly because schools are resegregating and we're nowhere close to Brown's vision even at all. But I digress.)
Posted by: EV at May 17, 2004 01:27 PM