November 18th marks three very queer events: the ruling that made Massachusetts the first U.S. state to have marriage equality; the repeal of the anti-LGBTQ Section 28 law in England and Wales; and (of less broad significance) the “Massaversary” of when my spouse and I legally wed after 13 years together.
Although same-sex couples in Massachusetts could not marry until May 17, 2004, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall had issued her groundbreaking ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health six months earlier, on November 18, 2003. Fast forward to 2006. My spouse Helen and I were living in New York, where we could not yet marry, but were moving to Massachusetts because Helen had gotten a new job there. Her new Massachusetts employer covered health insurance for employees’ spouses of any gender, but had stopped covering it for unmarried same-sex partners after marriage became legal for them (a short-sighted move, but that’s a whole other discussion). We therefore planned our wedding in about two weeks, since I was staying home with our son at the time and needed health insurance through her employer. We chose November 18th because it fit our schedules, and only realized the coincidence of the date when our justice of the peace mentioned it.
And yes, we were one of the many couples to use a 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 one being simply the occasion that the state caught up with what we’d known for 13 years. Still, we try to mark the day as a milestone (though not the beginning) of our lives together.
In England and Wales, November 18, 2003, also marked the repeal of the Section 28 law that had since May 1988 forbidden “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” The law had been the fear-driven response of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party to the 1980s AIDS crisis.
Additionally, this week is Transgender Awareness Week, a time to both celebrate trans identities and (for us cisgender folks) to learn more about how to honor and support them, so let’s not forget that among the other occasions.
Even if today is not your anniversary, I hope you’ll take these other occasions in queer history as a reason to celebrate (and do so again in six months, on May 17th). For myself, I’ll be wishing my spouse a very happy 15th anniversary of being legal, and happy that our two anniversaries give us an extra reason to eat cake.
