A Short History of Gay Marriage, Which Turns 10 Today

[n2doc]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Ten years ago today in Massachusetts, same-sex couples began to marry, becoming the first ones to do so in the United States. Opponents had predicted everything from familial destruction to the downfall of Western civilization. But what I saw that early morning when men and women began to have the right to say their vows in Cambridge, Mass., was sheer giddiness.

Eager to be first, officials had kept Cambridge City Hall open late Sunday night so that it could issue licenses precisely at 12:01 a.m. Monday. Hundreds of people turned out for what felt like a street party, lit by the news trucks’s klieg lights. Along with jubilant gays and lesbians, throngs of straight people werethrilled to be witnesses to a new American first. In Arlington, one town over, same-sex newlyweds were handed roses by strangers as they exited the Town Hall. The next day, an acquaintance with a deep Boston accent called to tell me she was keeping her kids home from school to witness her town’s first same-sex weddings. “How often do they get to see history?” she gushed. “Equality gives me goosebumps!”

It all happened so fast. And yet the success of the gay marriage movement never seemed as obvious along the way as it does now.

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http://news.yahoo.com/the-first-gay-marriage-was-10-years-ago--152225234.html

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. K & R

My wife and I have been married for 10+ years and, amazingly, we are still married- and so is everybody else (unless they divorced, however, of course, same-sex marriage has never been cited as a reason thereof). Oh, and the world hasn't ended. In short, the anti-marriage equality movement is living on borrowed time and all of the bans and amendments and legal challenges won't be able to save it. I actually have a good feeling that a real SSM challenge is finally going to wind up at SCOTUS and SCOTUS is going to tear the whole thing down on them, esp. if the Dems hold the WH in 2016.