For Massachusetts Gays, the Wedding Countdown

For months, the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Massachusetts consumed its supporters. Opponents of same-sex marriage were no less vigilant, right up to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to block Massachusetts on Monday from becoming the first state to extend the rights of marriage to gays and lesbians.

When that eleventh-hour effort failed late Friday, same-sex marriage advocates knew they could celebrate at last. At the first of more than 60 “Countdown to Marriage” parties across the state this weekend, same-sex marriage activist Josh Friedes, in a room festooned with lavender wedding bells, declared: “We have now won the right to marry.”

The plan for a weekend of celebration was underway well before the Florida-based Liberty Counsel lost its Supreme Court appeal. The Liberty Counsel, representing a group of Massachusetts organizations and 11 state lawmakers opposed to same-sex marriage, had predicted “history will be forever changed; chaos will ensue” if the unions were allowed.

From backyard barbecues to karaoke cocktail parties to sit-down dinners with fine table linens, the gatherings were timed to honor the moment when gays and lesbians could legally marry in the U.S.

“It’s a time to celebrate, and a time to reflect,” said Aime DeGrenier, 39, who is having a party today at her home in western Massachusetts -- and plans to marry her 42-year-old partner, Christine Clarke, soon.

“There are so many people who have worked so hard to make my civil rights their issue,” she said. “I felt it was really critical to take a moment to say thank you.” The countdown parties were organized by Freedom to Marry, a group formed in 1993 to push for legalizing same-sex marriages.

But not everyone in the commonwealth was rejoicing. As the parties began, so did the protests, starting with 400 foes of same-sex marriage who gathered Friday night at Boston’s Faneuil Hall and booed when they heard that the Supreme Court declined, without comment, to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying.

“In this 11:59 hour, we want to remind people the battle is not over,” said Kristian M. Mineau, acting president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

The pro-marriage festivities began Friday in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood that merrily bills itself as “the gayest ZIP Code in Boston.” The Rev. Anne Fowler, an Episcopal priest and active member of Boston’s Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry, decided to turn her annual spring party into a pre-wedding bash.

Mingling among about 50 guests were half a dozen couples planning to marry the minute they could. After a pair of rulings from the state’s highest court in the last six months that said barring gays and lesbians from marrying was unconstitutional, Cambridge announced it would be the first to issue same-sex marriage licenses -- at 12:01 a.m. Monday, the first day the state Supreme Judicial Court ruling takes effect.

Massachusetts requires a three-day waiting period, but with a court waiver, the wait can be avoided. All seven plaintiff couples in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health, the lawsuit that generated the historic court decision, intend to marry Monday.

But at Fowler’s party, Brad Reichard and Mike Shannon said they would wait until Thursday to trade vows at Secret Beach, their favorite stretch of sand on Cape Cod.

“We’ve been together 10 years, and we feel like we have been married in every sense, except legally,” said Shannon, a 48-year-old West Point graduate and engineer.

“On the one hand, it seems very ordinary -- marriage,” agreed Reichard, who is 34 and works in public relations. “But for us it is extraordinary.”

Andrew Rapp, editor of a gay magazine in Boston called Bay Windows, said a survey his publication took showed that many same-sex couples planned to obtain their marriage licenses quickly, but delay weddings until later in the year. The prolonged drama of the battle to enact the state high court decision left many couples wary, Rapp said.

Three joint legislative sessions known as a Constitutional Convention resulted in an amendment passed in March that would limit marriage in Massachusetts to a union between a man and a woman. But to become law, that constitutional amendment must be reapproved by the Legislature in 2005, and then passed as a ballot initiative by the general public in 2006. Freedom to Marry plans to work to defeat the amendment when it comes up for the mandatory second vote next year.

The state’s Republican governor, Mitt Romney, also went to great lengths to try to block gays and lesbians from marrying here, unsuccessfully introducing legislation to reverse the state court’s decision.

To help reduce an expected flood of same-sex couples from out of state, Romney made sure that a moribund 1913 law would be enforced by city and town clerks. That statute prohibits couples whose marriages would not be recognized in their home states from obtaining marriage licenses in Massachusetts.

During a brief window in February when same-sex marriages were performed in San Francisco, hundreds of couples from all over the country traveled there to wed.

In Boston, Rapp, 30, said that after seven years together, he and Todd Hultman, a 42-year-old nurse, would have a quiet wedding this week at their home.

“There really hasn’t been much time for wedding planning,” Rapp said, adding: “I certainly have been in that situation myself. We didn’t even draft a letter to family and friends notifying them that we were going to be married until about two weeks ago.”

That made the weekend “countdown” parties seem more essential, said Scott Gortikov, a Freedom to Marry volunteer who came up with the idea. To benefit the organization, hosts and hostesses across the state charged admission to parties or asked for donations in the course of speeches pitched at taking the state victory nationwide.

“We wanted to activate people -- to let them tell their stories -- and to ask them for money, because this fight is not over,” Gortikov said.

Gortikov, 45, said he and Ross Ozev, 43, plan to marry Friday.

In Cambridge, Karen Malme and Meg Stone made a quick trip to Trader Joe’s on Sunday to stock up for their countdown party immediately before the city starts issuing marriage licenses, just after midnight. Malme, a 38-year-old actress who also works as a clown at area hospitals, said she and Stone, 30, might also recycle some refreshments from an earlier party celebrating Stone’s completion of her master’s degree in public health.

Though they have been together more than five years, Malme said the reality of a wedding sneaked up on them -- in part because they were so caught up in the fight to make same-sex marriage legal.

“It’s strange. Meg and I are normally pretty organized people, but

Malme and Stone invited about 50 friends to their apartment, two blocks from Cambridge City Hall. Just before midnight, the group will trek over so Malme and Stone -- and any other guests who want to do so -- can take out their marriage license. The pair will marry during this fall’s foliage season, their favorite time of year in New England.