Today is a day of celebration! November 18 is the anniversary of the historic 2003 ruling that made Massachusetts the first U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to marry. It also marks the 2003 repeal of the U.K.’s anti-LGBTQ Section 28 law. Additionally, it’s the “Massaversary” of when my spouse and I legally wed (though we celebrate our true anniversary in April).
Although same-sex couples in Massachusetts could not marry until May 17, 2004, state Chief Justice Margaret Marshall had issued her groundbreaking ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health six months earlier. The lead plaintiffs, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, are also moms. They are no longer together, in part because of the stress of being in the public eye, and we should always remember their sacrifice even as we celebrate the progress they helped us achieve. One of the benefits of legal marriage, however, is recourse to established divorce proceedings, including child custody arrangements. We same-sex couples have never claimed to be more perfect than different-sex ones; we just wanted an equal opportunity to try and succeed.
Helen and I didn’t plan to have our wedding on this historic date three years after the ruling. We had been living in New York and planned our wedding in about two weeks, driven by Helen’s new job and the need to get me on her health insurance, since I was staying home with our son at the time. We only realized the coincidence when our justice of the peace mentioned it. But yes, we were one of the many couples to use the quote from Marshall’s decision as part of our ceremony. We still view our original anniversary, in the spring, as our “real” one, with this being simply the occasion that the state caught up with what we’d known for years. At the same time, it’s always good to have more reasons to celebrate, so if this means an extra excuse for cake, I’ll take it.
Over in England and Wales, the Section 28 law had since May 1988 forbidden “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” It was the response of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party to fear driven by the 1980s AIDS crisis. When I arrived there in the fall of 1988 for two years of study, it cast a pall over the LGBTQ community, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere when I left in 1990. Clearly, however, LGBTQ activists made a difference between then and 2003.
Are we still moving forward towards equality or are things slipping? Time will tell. Nevertheless, take a moment today to gain inspiration and energy from the progress that we have made.