Circle of Marriage Equality: Seeing Massachusetts From Indiana; A Decade Later, Seeing Indiana From Massachusetts
Why a Conversation Ten Years Ago Prompts Tears of Joy In June, and How a Clerk’s Ordinary Marriage License Issued Somewhere in Massachusetts Now Helps Cause Social Change in Indiana
The following is a copy-edited version of an opinion column published June 30, 2014, at YourArlington.com in Arlington, Massachusetts. I thank Bob Sprague, editor and publisher of YourArlington.com, for throwing a few electrons my way to publish this piece the first time on his site. [The subheads in this column were edited in by Bob and I have retained them.]
The circle is a symbol of marriage. It’s the shape of the marriage ring, a model for relations between two people in a marriage. It’s also the shape of emotions of I’ve had last month and again this month about news concerning progress of marriage equality in the United States in two states I care deeply about: Indiana and Massachusetts.
This circle began a little more than 10 years ago, when I sat on the front steps of my house in a leafy neighborhood in the central part of Indianapolis, Indiana, and debated the wisdom of a perplexing piece of news with Melissa, my neighbor across the street.
The news on that spring night in 2004 was that in far-away Massachusetts, the state’s highest court had ordered that same-sex marriages be allowed to proceed.
At the time, I was the father of two young children and married for 25 years to the same woman. Melissa was in a lesbian relationship with her longtime partner, Stephanie. While vacationing in the West a few weeks earlier, they had married in San Francisco during a pre-Massachusetts spate of gay marriages in the Golden Gate city that were later nullified. We had celebrated with them about their marriage during a small party in their living room. But it seemed incredible that the marriage might ever be recognized legally in Indiana.
"I’m not sure about this drive for national gay and lesbian marriage," I said to Melissa. "I’m concerned about rights for gay and lesbian people. I’m all for civil unions. But marriage? That’s taking on a lot, to change the system in every state like that — or get the Supreme Court or Congress to make a national change.
"Isn’t working on marriage a diversion from far more important issues in discrimination against gays and lesbians? What about protecting people on the job, or in public accommodations, or in health care and taxation — or just addressing hate crimes?"
Idea 'seemed strange in those days'
I cannot remember how Melissa felt at the time, and so I’m reluctant to put words in her mouth. My recollection is that she was in full consideration of the question as well — how much stock to put into spreading the Massachusetts example around the country — but I cannot remember whether she thought it was the right political agenda for gays, lesbians and the P-FLAG crowd to focus upon.
The San Francisco marriages had seemed like an anomaly, and maybe the Massachusetts decision was more of the same. The idea of permanent marriage for gays and lesbians seemed very strange in those days.
We all know what happened to marriage equality since then. It’s taken off like wildfire, especially in the past year as judges in state after state strike down discriminatory laws preventing marriage equality.
Twists and turns to Arlington
Meanwhile, in my own life, I wound up with a bunch of twists and turns that I did not at all anticipate in 2004. Five years later, in 2009, I moved to “far-away Massachusetts" and settled in Arlington.
Among other activities in Arlington, I became a member of the Arlington Human Rights Commission. By the time I joined the AHRC last fall, plans for a full-scale celebration in Arlington of ten years of marriage equality in Massachusetts were well under way.
The celebration was held last month at the Whittemore-Robbins House and featured comments by David Wilson of Boston. With his husband, Rob Compton, David was one of the plaintiff couples in the suit against Massachusetts that resulted in the 2004 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court ordering recognition of marriage equality in the Commonwealth. I’m also proud that when they were finally able to be married, the ceremony occurred in one of the most famous Unitarian Universalist churches in our nation, the Arlington Street Church in Boston (not to be confused with First Parish of Arlington, Mass.).
At the ceremony in our town last month, I told David Wilson about the night I discussed same-sex marriage with Melissa ten years earlier in Indianapolis. “I didn’t know it then,” I told David, “but when Melissa and I had that deep conversation about marriage and progress for gays and lesbians, we were actually talking about what you and Rob had done. We were talking about you, but we didn’t know it. I’m so glad to meet you!”
David kindly accepted the compliment about his role.
Impact in Indiana
On Wednesday, June 24, an order in the morning by U.S. District Judge Richard Young in Indianapolis brought me full circle, back to the same joy I felt in meeting David Wilson at the Whittemore-Robbins House, and even back to that night 10 years ago talking with Melissa about the wisdom — the efficacy, really — of advocating marriage equality as a political goal for gays and lesbians.
Out in far-away Indiana, Judge Young ordered marriage equality for the Hoosier State. A friend of mine from political activism days in Indiana named Beth White is the elected county clerk in Indianapolis. She runs the state’s largest county clerk office. At lunchtime on Wednesday, Beth began accepting same-sex marriage licenses and performing same-sex marriage ceremonies.
By 5 p.m. on Wednesday, just 4 1/2 hours later, she had processed more than 50 marriage licenses and performed 31 civil weddings. Hundreds of couples waited outside in the central hallway of the 27-story local government building’s lobby. Lines like that are unheard of. Beth was going to keep her office open long enough to process any couples still on line at 8 p.m. Wednesday. I suspect Beth must have stayed up much of the night doing so.
I know. I know. It’s old news, this spread of marriage equality over the country. It’s gone from revolutionary to boring. Perhaps some other state you once lived in — or a state you care about because your relatives or friends live there — has already been ordered, or legislatively has chosen, to honor marriage equality. Perhaps there are states you care about where marriage equality is still a dream, not a reality.
Until Wednesday morning, that described how I felt about Indiana. But it all changed on Wednesday. I used to be a news reporter in the City-County Building in Indianapolis. Wednesday, I watched WTHR-TV reports about the hundreds of couples lined up in the central corridor of the local government headquarters in Indianapolis, waiting for my friend Beth to perform her duty (gladly, I might add) and marry them. Very clearly, not one of them expected that Wednesday would be the day they’d get married or that Wednesday was the day they’d be helping people get married. Everyone was in street clothes for a blistering hot day. No one was formally dressed.
Wednesday night, as I first wrote this, a service of thanks was held at a North United Methodist Church, a large politically liberal church two blocks from my old home.
On Friday evening, same-sex marriages in Indiana were stopped -- temporarily, I hope. Another friend from Indiana political days, state Attorney General Greg Zoeller, had requested and received a stay on enforcement of Judge Young's order from the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, which has jurisdiction over Indiana federal courts.
The stay is similar to actions taken by other federal appeals courts in response to district court opinions declaring bans on same-sex marriages illegal in several states. As in Indiana, the stays have been issued in other states at the request of state attorneys general.
On her Facebook page, Angie Nussmeyer, head of the elections and voter registration divisions in the county clerk office at Indianapolis, reported that at week's end, Clerk White had since Judge Young’s order issued more than 575 marriage licenses and officiated at 450 marriages conducted inside in the clerk's office, where a conference room was converted into a makeshift wedding chapel. Angie said many citizen volunteers came to the clerk's office to help direct lines of people and perform other tasks that kept the process moving.
I read through the PDF of Judge Young’s decision for Indiana. In it, I discovered that only one of the couples suing Indiana did so on the grounds that they were already married and thus in a marriage not recognized in Indiana. This couple had traveled at one time from their Indiana home to visit family out-of-state, chosen to marry during the family visit, and returned to Indiana where, of course, their marriage was not honored. So they sued, becoming one of the plaintiffs in the suit decided Wednesday morning in Indianapolis.
The state where they had become married -- the state whose decision to embrace marriage equality became the basis for their claim of discrimination in Indiana — was: Massachusetts. Moreover, the presence as plaintiffs of the Indiana couple married in Massachusetts was also specifically cited in Zoeller’s appeal of Judge Young’s order.
And so this story of personal relationship with the issue of marriage equality — this movement for social change and civil rights for all — came full circle for me in late June. Ten years ago, Massachusetts made a decision and I sat in Indianapolis and marveled at it. On Wednesday, a judge made a decision for Indiana, and I sat in Massachusetts and cried tears of joy for the decision, joy for the people becoming married and joy for the positive change this is bringing for the people of our country.
I also cried because somewhere in our Commonwealth, in the records of a town or city clerk, is an ordinary and perfectly routine record of a marriage — a same-sex marriage which is no longer news in the Bay State, but which became an element making momentous news in a state I once called home. This ordinary record has a constitutional enforceable right to be recognized in other states, in my belief. I call myself a Hoosier as well as a New Englander, and I am proud that this week, the demand Massachusetts made by issuing that marriage license received federal protection for the couple holding the license in a state I once called home. In a way, I am also proud that Attorney General Zoeller felt compelled to specifically address the presence of this Massachusetts marriage license in his appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In doing something now seen as ordinary, Massachusetts again fed this social revolution swiftly becoming accepted across our land.
Doug Davidoff: New Yorker, New Englander, Tar Heel, Hoosier, Chicagoan. Father, Democrat, Unitarian Universalist and Jewish. History Lover, Traveler, Sailor. Writer/Editor. Aspiring Vermonter. Principal Consultant for Straight Talk Public Relations at www.StraightTalkPR.com. Personal website: www.DouglassDavidoff.com.