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Personal Reflection by Sue Hyde - National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 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 citys health 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, 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.
MARRIAGE: THE STATE OF THE UNION March 31, 2004, LA Times Throughout most of human history, a man married a woman out of desire — for her father's goats, perhaps. Marriage was a business arrangement. The bride was a commodity, her dowry a deal sweetener. And the groom was likely to be an unwitting pawn in an economic alliance between two families. A church may or may not have been involved. Government was out of the loop. There was no paperwork, no possibility of divorce, and — more often than not — no romance. But there was work to be done: procreation, the rearing of children and the enforcement of a contract that allowed for the orderly transfer of wealth and the cycle of arranged matrimony to continue. In the debate over same-sex marriage, each side offers competing ideals that they claim hark back to the historical essence of matrimony. In calling for a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, President Bush has described contemporary heterosexual marriage as "the most fundamental institution of civilization," forged during "millennia of human experience." Thousands of gays and lesbians who have married in defiance of state law in San Francisco and elsewhere maintain they possess what has always mattered most in a relationship: Love. But marriage, it turns out, has never been that simple. For much of its history, matrimony has been a matter of cold economic calculation, a condition to be endured rather than celebrated. Notions of marriage taken for granted today — its voluntary nature, the legal equality of partners, even the pursuit of happiness — required centuries to evolve. "We live in such a chaotic world, the idea of a relationship that is constant — not only in our own lives but historically — is something we want to invest in," said Hendrik Hartog, a Princeton University history professor who wrote a book on the legal evolution of marriage. "It's natural to romanticize the history of marriage, and advocates of gay marriage are as invested in this as conservatives are." A 'malleable' institution Marriage as Americans know it today didn't exist 2,000 years ago, or even 200 years ago. Rather than an unbending pillar of society, marriage has been an extraordinarily elastic institution, constantly adapting to religious, political and economic shifts and pliable in the face of sexual revolutions, civil rights movements and changing cultural norms. "It's extremely malleable," said Thomas Laqueur, a history professor at UC Berkeley who has studied marriage and sexuality. "Historically, anthropologically, the word 'marriage' needs to be placed in quotation marks." One reason that marriage seems so unchanging is that it has evolved glacially, inching forward on many paths at once. In Greek mythology, Zeus created Pandora, the first woman. Then he made her the first bride and gave her as a gift to the Titan Epimetheus. The union ended poorly when Pandora opened the wedding gift she came with, unleashing from the box all of the evils of mankind. And some newlyweds today complain when they get a toaster. Like Zeus, Greek fathers considered their daughters property and essentially bartered them for the purpose of cementing an economic or political alliance. The Romans codified marriage, introducing the idea of consent and setting the minimum age of grooms at 14, brides at 12. There were three types of union, and which one you got depended on your social class. The rich got a confarreatio, which included a big celebration, a special cake, maybe an animal sacrifice. The masses simply shacked up, and after a time they were considered married. A woman in a coemptio was essentially sold to her husband and had the same status as a child. Arranged marriages remained common in Western societies into the 19th century. It is still the rule in parts of central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It's a practice replete with abuse, from female infanticide by parents fearful of having to pay for a marriage someday to "bride burnings" of women whose families provide an insufficient dowry. The Romans promoted monogamy at a time when polygamy was common throughout the pre-Christian world. The ancient Chinese had their concubines, and from David to Abraham, the Hebrew scriptures read like Utah in the mid-19th century, full of men who had dozens, even hundreds, of wives. "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women: the daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, E'domite, Sido'nian, and Hittite women … ," reads 1 Kings 11:1, in the revised standard version of the Bible. "He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart." Add a pickup, and it's a country song. Polygamy more common In fact, polygamy has been more common than monogamy over the full sweep of human history. The Roman Catholic Church would take up the push for monogamy, and through the centuries it overtook polygamy as the standard worldwide. But polygamy is stubborn. Though the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed it in 1879, polygamy survives in the shadows of the Mormon West. And, while waning, it is still practiced in the Muslim world and illegally in Israel by some ultra-orthodox Jews, among other places. Polyandry, marriages involving one woman and more than one man, have cropped up among Eskimos and, even today, in Tibet. Even where there have been clear rules about marriage, there have been more loopholes than there are in the U.S. Tax Code. King Henry VIII famously broke from Catholicism and started his own church largely so he could divorce and marry again — and again. European commoners who couldn't legally divorce sold their wives. The Muslim tradition of a temporary "pleasure" union, which dates to the days of Muhammad, is still used to legalize sex under Islamic law. Its Western counterpart: the Vegas quickie wedding, sometimes sanctified at a drive-through chapel or presided over by an Elvis impersonator. Impassioned couples began to flock to Nevada in the 1920s, after California imposed a three-day waiting period in an attempt to keep drunken lovers from the altar. What constitutes a marriage is so fluid that many anthropologists sidestep the word altogether, preferring "unions" or "alliances," said Roger Lancaster, a professor of anthropology and cultural studies at George Mason University in Virginia. Other scholars refer to same-sex unions throughout history — in cultures as varied as ancient Greece, tribal Africa and native North America — as marriages. No single, timeless thing "The strong conclusion that anthropologists have arrived at is that marriage isn't a single, timeless, unchanging thing," Lancaster said. "People are inventive and creative about the ways they've forged ties to one another." If there is a constant in the fluid history of marriage it is that economics has shaped the institution. Some historians believe marriage evolved during the shift from nomadic cultures to settled agrarian societies. When you're roaming the desert with your possessions on a camel's back, property and inheritance rights aren't as complicated as when land and buildings are involved. With increasing urbanization, children once seen as economic assets, as a source of labor, became an expense. Women were no longer property. The social upheavals spawned by industrialization — transient populations, mass education, the women's rights movement and the creation of leisure time — redefined marriage just as the plow once did. "Inventions like the bicycle, the telephone and the car all played a role," said Bernard Murstein, a professor emeritus of psychology at Connecticut College who wrote a book on the history of marriage. "These things gave kids a chance to get together on their own." Shakespeare was, of course, way ahead of the curve when he had Juliet dismiss her parents' plan for an arranged patriarchal marriage and hook up with a young hottie instead. I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear, It shall be Romeo … In the 1500s, this was forward-thinking stuff. But by 1905, the idea that love should be the paramount reason for marriage was mainstream enough for the Ladies' Home Journal. "No high-minded girl and no girl with refined feeling," a woman writer noted, "ever admits the advisability of marriage without love." Ever so slowly, marriage had become about compatibility, not how many goats the prospective in-laws had. Some believe that the modern institution of marriage didn't emerge until the early 19th century. "It's a 200-year-old story: the slow, haphazard but ultimately triumphal ascension of individual human happiness as the primary reason for marriage," Hartog said. "It's a huge change, and unprecedented. Love has always existed. But the idea that love should exist in marriage is a historic novelty." Latest debate about gays Today, in the debate over same-sex marriage, both sides claim history is on their side. Advocates for gay marriage say it's the natural evolution of an institution that's no longer tied exclusively to procreation. "Is there some reason a heterosexual couple without children should have the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage but a lesbian couple with biological children from both mothers should not?" writer Andrew Sullivan, who is gay, said in a 2000 essay. Opponents say legalizing same-sex marriage would undo all of the progress that has perfected marriage as we know it today: a union between one man and one woman. In their view, placing gay marriage on the same legal and cultural footing as heterosexual marriage would further undermine the nuclear family and would be tantamount to endorsing homosexuality. "This is a political knife fight," said Robert A. Destro, a law professor at the Catholic University of America. "Either you keep marriage the same or in the future it won't be recognizable at all. It will look like a horse that's been designed by a committee." Destro and other critics see gay matrimony as the modern incarnation of Pandora's box, raising the question: What's next? The re-emergence of polygamy? Three men who want to be declared married to one another? Supporters of gay unions, however, say the story of marriage isn't confined to dusty history books. The transformation of matrimony is a contemporary tale as well. Interracial couples, they point out, couldn't marry in some states until 1967. Also as recently as a few decades ago, couples who couldn't reproduce might struggle with feelings of pity and shame. Today, it's not uncommon for couples to regard children as a lifestyle choice rather than an imperative. Gay couples want all the legal protections enjoyed by heterosexual couples, and nothing short of marriage can do that. Benefits in state laws allowing civil unions, such as California's, aren't recognized in other states. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act recognizes only male-female unions for the purpose of all federal laws, including Social Security and the Tax Code. Rules that allow a widow to avoid inheritance tax on her deceased husband's 401(k) plan, for instance, don't apply to the surviving partner of a gay union. In the battle over same-sex marriage, the lessons that history might provide are like everything else: a point of disagreement. "It's hard to predict where marriage will go in the future," said Marilyn Yalom, a senior scholar at Stanford University's Institute for Research on Women & Gender. "The only thing that I can predict is that there will always be something in us that calls for another to complement ourselves, someone to be a soul-mate and to witness our lives."
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