Massachusetts celebrated 20
Years of Marriage Equality on May 17, thanks
to the landmark decision in Goodridge v.
Department of Public Health. This decision
preceded the historic U.S. Supreme Court
ruling by 11 years, with the Obergefell v.
Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex
marriage in all 50 states.
In 2004, at 12:01 am, the city
of Cambridge was the first in the nation to
issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples,
and at 9:15 am, the first couple was married.
Cambridge takes pride in being
the first, and over the course of three days,
the Office of Mayor Denise Simmons, the first
African American lesbian mayor in the country
in 2008, and the City hosted several events
with guest speakers like LGBTQ+ ally
Congresswoman Ayanna Presley.
“It is an
honor to call the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts my home because of
groundbreaking, humanity-centered, and
justice-actualizing decisions like this one”
to be the first City Hall to issue licenses
to same-sex couples, Presley told the
audience in the Cambridge City Hall chamber.
“I often use Cambridge as a way to get my
colleagues to do things.”
Also, at the events were guest
speakers former M.A. State Representative
Byron Rushing, who played a critical role in
legalizing same-sex marriage, and Marcia Hams
and Susan Shepard, who were the first couple
to receive a same-sex marriage license in
Cambridge on May 17, 2004.
“I want to
give a big shout-out to all the lawyers,
organizations, and activists, particularly
the plaintiff couples who brought the case
of marriage equality to our courts in
Massachusetts,” Hams told the audience at
City Hall. “I especially want to thank Chief
Justice Margaret Marshall of Massachusetts
Supreme Court, who ruled in our favor for
equality and liberty for us all, including
marriage.”
Since 2004, I’ve officiated over
250 LGBTQ+ couples, including Mayor Denise
Simmons’s nuptials. When interviewed for this
20th anniversary, I was asked to show photos.
I had to sort them into three piles as I’ve
done with heterosexual couples, highlighting
we are like everyone else: deceased, divorced,
and still together.
Looking back at advances since
2004, such as hate crime laws, the repeal of
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and DOMA, the
legalization of marriage equality, same-sex
adoption, and anti-homophobic bullying
becoming a national concern, among a few, the
LGBTQ+ community has come a long way since the
first Pride marches.
When you reside at the
intersections of multiple identities, as I do,
the 20th anniversary of Marriage Equality in
Massachusetts is also the 70th anniversary of
the historic U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown
v. Board of Education. This ruling upended
this country’s separate but equal doctrine,
adopted in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of
1896.
However, victory comes with
backlash.
On this year’s anniversary of
Brown v. Board of Education, African American
and Latinx American students continue to
attend not only segregated schools - whether
here in Boston or across the nation. Also,
they overwhelmingly attend high-poverty urban
ones with metal detectors. Sadly, not only has
policing while schooling doubled since 2001 to
the present day, but so has the
school-to-prison pipeline.
As for us, LGBTQ+ Americans,
bigotry works in this political climate.
Anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in the U.S. has
taken a hard-right political turn since Trump.
And with a Trumped-up Supreme Court, of which
five are pro-lifers, the uber-conservatives
have eroded decades-long civil rights gains
and the Constitutional mandate of separation
between church and state. With Roe v Wade
overturned in 2022, many of us are worried
about what will happen to the goals of
reproductive justice, marriage equality, our
right to same-gender intimacy, and the fight
to combat hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation
bills. The majority of them target our
transgender population- to date, 552 bills in
42 states. These bills ban trans people from
bathrooms, pronouns, sports, gender-affirming
surgery, and drag queen story hours, to name a
few. Restricting transgender rights works for
Trump’s evangelical base, hoping it’ll help
the GOP in this coming presidential election.
HRC has declared a state of emergency for
LGBTQ+ Americans.
Marriage Equality celebrations
throughout Massachusetts were joyous and
worrisome. The joy of twenty years is an
important milestone. However, many wonder if
same-sex marriage will still exist twenty
years from now.
“We must
continue to fight,” Rushing told his
audience at Kendall Center Public Lobby in
Cambridge. “It might appear that we cannot
win in this polarized climate, but we can,
and we must. I imagine a world in twenty
years where gay marriage is incredibly
ordinary.”
