It was five years ago today when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that, y’know, that pesky separate but equal clause in the Constitution means that, barring a compelling reason (i.e., not counting “tradition” or “religion”), you really can’t treat people unequally under the law, hence gay marriage.
And what has happened?
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes …
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!— Aykroyd & Ramis, Ghostbusters (1984)
Meh. Not so much. Eleven thousand gay marriages later …
Massachusetts has yet to become, as former governor Mitt Romney predicted, the “Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.” Gay marriage rates leveled off at about 1,500 a year – about 4 percent of all state marriages – in 2006 and 2007. The divorce rate in Massachusetts has remained the same – and the lowest in the country.
Of course, for some folks opposed to gays, the consequences have been even more dire than Biblical Wrath of God-style Destruction: normalcy.
What’s really changed is more subtle than cosmic, more about the everyday lives of gay couples in Massachusetts than about a national transformation. Gay and lesbian couples here said they are attracting fewer startled looks when they rent cars, less consternation when they hold hands, fewer awkward questions when they visit spouses in hospital rooms.
“When we’re out together as a couple, it really doesn’t come up; we’re never challenged anymore,” said David Wilson, one of the plaintiffs in the 2003 SJC case and the current chairman of MassEquality, a gay-rights advocacy group. “It’s now considered normal.”
Maureen Brodoff and Ellen Wade, who were among the first gay and lesbian couples to wed here, have noticed the decrease in embarrassed double takes when they introduce themselves as wife and wife.
“The sky didn’t fall,” Brodoff said Wednesday, as she and Wade sat with their English setters Diana and Joey in the living room of their tidy Colonial in Newton Centre. “The newness of it has eased. It’s just another marriage.
And worse than normalcy … acceptance.
In February 2004, a survey of 400 voters found that 42 percent were in favor of same-sex marriage and 44 percent opposed it. In a similar survey completed this August, approval sprang to 59 percent and opposition sank to 37 percent, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which conducted the polls.
State Representative Brian P. Wallace, a Democrat from South Boston, has felt that mood in his district. Wallace, who in January 2007 voted in favor of a ban on same-sex marriage, was one of several lawmakers who changed their minds in June 2007, when the Legislature defeated a measure to put the question of marriage on the ballot.
“My constituency is changing,” he explained. Although “there’s still people who haven’t spoken to me after the vote,” most of his constituents, he said, no longer worry about same-sex marriage.
“Nobody is hurt by it,” Wallace said. “There are other issues.”
Nobody is hurt by it. There are other issues.
Wow. How … rational. And compassionate. And just.
(via Pam and DOF)