Massachusetts Performs First Legal Gay Marriages
By Greg Frost
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5166121
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Two women were among the first gay couples to be legally married on Monday and hundreds more waited for their turn to make history as Massachusetts became the only U.S. state to allow same-sex marriage.
Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, who have been partners for 18 years, were married by Cambridge City Clerk Margaret Drury shortly after 9 a.m. EDT.
"Now by the power vested in me by the state of Massachusetts as a justice of the peace, and most of all by the power of your own love, I now pronounce you married under the laws of Massachusetts," Drury said. "You may seal this marriage with a kiss." The couple embraced.
The election-year milestone, which is likely to fuel legal and political battles nationwide, made Kadish, a human resources employee, swoon. "I feel all tingly and wonderful. So much love, can't you see it is just bursting out of me?"
Cheered on by thousands of well-wishers, more than 250 gay couples kicked off the festivities at the stroke of midnight in the famously liberal community of Cambridge when they applied for marriage licenses.
In Boston, florists hauled in buckets of long-stemmed red roses under gray skies and police officers set up barricades as hundreds of gay couples snaked past dozens of photographers and camera trucks to get their licenses at City Hall.
All seven couples whose 2001 lawsuit led to last year's court order permitting same-sex marriage planned to wed on Monday.
MASSACHUSETTS IN SPOTLIGHT
Conservatives have assailed Massachusetts' top court, which ruled last year that a state ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional and allowed same-sex couples to wed legally.
For the most part, gay marriage opponents remained quiet as hundreds prepared to tie the knot, but a handful of anti-gay activists turned out on Sunday night in Cambridge holding signs like "God Hates Fags."
"If they're going to allow this, then why not incest? Why not have people marry animals? Why not polygamy?" asked protester Ben Phelps of Topeka, Kansas.
Thousands of same-sex couples were married in San Francisco earlier this year, but the marriages were not recognized by the state of California. A mayor in New York state is being prosecuted after performing gay marriages in February.
The issue has catapulted Massachusetts into the national spotlight in an election year with its junior senator, Democrat John Kerry challenging Republican President Bush for the White House. Both oppose gay marriage.
The final hurdle was cleared on Friday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute legal challenge filed by conservative opponents of same-sex weddings.
A federal appeals court has agreed to hear the case next month, but by that time clerks will probably have granted hundreds of marriage licenses to homosexual couples.
Some may be given to out-of-state gay couples who come to Massachusetts in defiance of Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, who has told them to stay home amid fears his state could become "the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage." In Provincetown, two men from Anniston, Alabama, were among the first to get their license and planned to wed later in the day.
Citing a 1913 state law that prevents Massachusetts from marrying any couple if the marriage would be "void" in their home states, Romney's administration has warned clerks they can issue licenses to out-of-state couples only if they plan on settling in Massachusetts.
Several clerks, noting the statute has not been strictly applied to heterosexual couples, plan on issuing licenses to all gay couples who request them.
