The US Socialist Worker’s Gina Sartori, Conor Morey-Barrett and Elizabeth Schulte report on the victory for gay marriage in Massachusetts.

Thousands of people gathered at city halls across Massachusetts on May 17 as the state took its place in the history books as the first to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. In Cambridge, thousands gathered in front of city hall the night before — laughing, embracing and cutting cake as they waited for licenses to begin being issued at midnight.

That same day, gay marriage supporters organised solidarity actions in cities across the country to celebrate this civil rights victory — and to demand licenses of their own. Hundreds of people marched in San Francisco and Seattle. In Chicago, dozens of protesters occupied the Cook County marriage license office all day long, demanding the right to marry.

Fittingly, May 17 marked the 50th anniversary of another civil rights landmark — the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision that ended legal segregation in public schools. Last November, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court echoed the Brown decision when its justices declared that “separate is seldom, if ever, equal” in the case of gay marriage.

The decision upheld the court’s previous Goodridge decision, which stated that denying same-sex couples the rights that married couples enjoy violates the Massachusetts constitution’s equal protection law. The Goodridge case dates back to 1996, when Julie Goodridge, who was recovering from a difficult cesarean section, and her newborn daughter were rushed to emergency care at a Boston hospital.

Hillary, Goodridge’s partner of nine years, was unable to visit because hospital officials said that she wasn’t a “family member”. After today, fewer gay or lesbian couples will be forced to go through this experience.

The bigots remain determined to roll back gay marriage in Massachusetts. After last year’s Supreme Judicial Court decisions, antigay politicians — Republicans and Democrats alike — went to work to reverse the rulings by trying to pass an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers considered several versions of constitutional ban — and passed the amendment at two separate sessions. Although this is only the first part of a three-step amendment process — guaranteeing that the ban can’t go into effect until 2006 — it’s still a defeat for supporters of gay marriage.

Unfortunately, leaders of MassEquality — the umbrella coalition of gay and lesbian lobbying groups — pursued a strategy of questionable legal manoeuvres in trying to stop the amendment. They actually supported the ban in two rounds of voting and called for a compromise — “no to marriage, yes to civil unions”.

[Visit Socialist Worker at <http://www.socialistworker.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.
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