Present at the Creation
by Michael Kress

At first, I don't realize why all the news trucks are parked outside the generally uninteresting City Hall down the block from me here in Cambridge, Mass. Then it becomes clear: Though we still have eight hours to go before midnight — when gay marriage becomes legal in the state — people already are lining up. City Hall will be open in the middle of the night to make history, the first in the state to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

May 17, 2004, will go down in history as the day the first legal same-sex marriages were performed in the United States. My wife and I spend a few minutes standing on the sidewalk in front of City Hall, just watching, soaking in the scene, though nothing is really going on. People stand. Some sit. Television news reporters chat among themselves and set up their equipment.

As midnight approaches, we decide to go out to City Hall. Now hundreds of people crowd the lawn and the street, which is blocked off to traffic. Some hold signs, from the simple ("Yay!") to the sectarian ("Mazel Tov," in Hebrew and English letters) to the humorous ("Our Husbands Were Getting Boring Anyway"). People blow bubbles; a live band plays. The police, in riot gear, don't have much to do.

It is the sort of festive community gathering that is rare these days, people coming together just to celebrate. It's more reminiscent of a sporting event than a civic function. Before the street is closed, cars honk triumphantly as they pass, and the crowd cheers in response. Families with young children as well as couples — heterosexual and homosexual — snuggle together. Many, many high school and college students have come out to cheer and watch. People pass bouquets through the crowd, stranger to stranger, the flowers eventually making their way to the front and are handed to the couples waiting to wed. Across the street, a handful of protestors, with signs like "God Hates Fags," are confined to a "First Amendment Zone."

The crowd breaks into a spontaneous "Star Spangled Banner," followed by "This Land is Your Land." I hear some complaints from people around me. One woman declares that this event is about people, not politics — a personal, not a national, moment. But most complaints are more amorphous and disturbing, as a few people express strong discomfort with the patriotic nature of the songs themselves. These complaints seem as out of place as the anti-Bush signs or, for that matter, the anti-gay signs.

As couples arrive and walk up the steps, the crowd cheers and applauds wildly. A couple of rounds of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" are followed, at 11:59, by "Tomorrow." Then the crowd counts down "Three, two, one!" and begins to chant, "We are equal! We are equal!" Rice rains down on anyone remotely near the couples emerging triumphantly from the building. A nearby Episcopal church offers pastries and coffee, along with a card congratulating newlyweds and inviting them to join the gay-friendly parish.

There'll be more than enough time to fight about constitutional amendments, the legality of marrying out-of-state residents, reconciling gay marriage and religious tradition and the ramifications of same-sex unions on the institution of marriage. And there will be a day when this event is in the history books, when I will tell my children about what I saw at City Hall. For now, though, I just feel like taking a moment to savor what is happening. I want to stop and remember this moment, this massive expression of exuberance, the humanity behind the politics. Though I support same-sex marriage, I am not an activist or even particularly vocal on the issue. Yet something changed for me this weekend. Maybe I'm just swept up in the enthusiasm, or maybe the humanization of the issue — real couples lining up for real marriage licenses — crystallized it all and confirmed concretely what I felt all along about this divisive issue.

My wife, Stephanie, and I hold hands throughout the spectacle, and I feel fortunate to be married, and to have done so without political fanfare. I can't possibly imagine what it must be like to be denied this privilege, or to be suddenly granted it. I get a glimpse of that here tonight, though, in the sheer spontaneity and joy that is contagious and seems to be spreading throughout this city.

At home, I can still hear the cheering from my bathroom as I brush my teeth. In the morning, I will wake up and pack my lunch and go to work and come home and have dinner with my wife. A day like any other. For, now, though, I am struck by the fact that a whole new set of couples will have a chance for that same mundane scenario. Dinner with their legally recognized spouses — not their "significant others," not their "partners." History. Awe. At the City Hall down the block. And that's what's going on tonight here in Cambridge.