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A generation ago, the first same-sex couples got married in the United States. What was once controversial has become commonplace, providing happiness and rights to these families and lessons about social and political change.
On the earliest day possible, May 17, 2004, Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish tied the knot. They had already been a couple for nearly two decades.
Unfortunately, these two can no longer mark their wedding anniversary because McCloskey died in 2016 from endometrial cancer. But their legal connection mattered through this sickness. Because Kadish and McCloskey were married, Kadish was better able to help her beloved. As Kadish explained, while the disease was “awful [and] ugly … There was never a time that I couldn’t see her in the hospital. I pretty much didn’t leave her side for almost a year. And we were respected. It was a beautiful thing, the support.”
These initial weddings followed Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, a case decided in 2003 by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Seven couples, represented by Maine lawyer Mary Bonauto, sought equal rights.
After the decision was announced, opponents expressed their dismay and engaged in scaremongering. For example, anti-gay leader Tony Perkins claimed the court was “redefining marriage to the point of extinction.”
For a while, marriage equality remained highly controversial. In November 2004, referendums defining marriage as between one man and one woman appeared on the ballots of 11 states. While passing, they boosted turnout by conservative voters, including in Ohio. George W. Bush’s win there gave him his Electoral College victory. (Interestingly, Democrats are now hoping that state votes on abortion rights will help President Joe Biden’s campaign.)
In the last two decades, there’s been rather rapid social change, with marriage equality becoming broadly accepted.
In 2004, when weddings for same-sex couples began in Massachusetts, the Gallup Poll found that less than half of Americans — 42 percent — supported it. Still, this was a sharp increase from 27 percent in 1996. And seven years after those initial weddings, a majority of Americans (53 percent) supported marriage equality.
In recent years, 7 in 10 Americans have viewed these marriages as valid. All age groups agree, ranging from 60 percent of voters 65 or older and 89 percent of voters between 18-29.
None of these shifts happened by themselves.
Part of the credit goes to legal efforts and strategies, culminating in the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage constitutional in the entire country, in a case also argued by Bonauto.
But this effort went beyond what happened with briefs and in courtrooms. Lesbians and gay men came out of the closet, shifting public opinion.
In Maine’s 2012 marriage referendum campaign, LGBTQ+ people and their straight allies talked to their loved ones and neighbors, persuading them. As Robert Glover and I explained, this sort of strategy “requires us to find shared language and common ideas — and to talk directly to voters who are outside of our current camp.”
And so we see that social change can happen quickly with respectful, persistent action that treats others with care and engages them in dialogue.
Since the marriages in Massachusetts, opponents’ scary predictions didn’t materialize. According to a recent study by RAND, the economic and physical health of same-sex couples improved. And it certainly didn’t harm marriages involving straight people. Among different-sex couples, new marriages increased and cohabitation decreased. Attitudes toward marriage as an institution among high school seniors has improved.
Still, some political opposition remains. Recently attendees at the 2024 Maine Republican convention “rejected an attempt to acknowledge legal same-sex marriage, while still defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
Meanwhile, another couple’s life course tells the story of what happened.
As David Wilson, who married Rob Compton 20 years ago, put it, “back then everyone was against us, and it was very unnerving.” As a Wall Street Journal reporter who interviewed them noted, “some believed [the marriage] would bring on the apocalypse.” But today Wilson and Compton “are happily retired and spend their time volunteering and visiting with their grandchildren.” For Wilson, Compton and other gay men or lesbians who now can enter into matrimony, the result was the ability to live as a family with love and commitment.
