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CAMBRIDGE - It seemed like some mix of Mardi Gras, Earth Day, and
the happiest group wedding in history.
What started in the afternoon as a sedate lawn party in front of
City Hall, with running children, glow sticks, and panting dogs,
had by midnight become a celebration so huge that it was hard to
walk across the thin lawn without getting a face full of bubbles,
knocking into someone with a sign reading “Mazel Tov,”
or colliding with women singing “Going to the Chapel”
accompanied by a brass band.
The cheer that went up at about 10 minutes past midnight, when it
became clear that the first gay couple had filed their application
for a marriage license, was so long and so loud that it nearly drowned
out the final strains of Mendelssohn's wedding march.
By 12:30 a.m. those cheers were erupting every minute or two, as
each couple emerged from the building, marching down an impromptu
aisle cleared by the crowd, one step closer to full-?edged marriage.
By then the throngs had spilled into the center of Massachusetts
Avenue, which police closed off from Central Square to Harvard Square.
It was filled with local well-wishers, college students in school
T-shirts, families from nearby towns who came out to cheer their
friends. Some threw rice, others roses, and one man passed out cupcakes
with pink hearts on them.
One supporter held a sign reading "See Chicken Little, the
sky is not falling," while two women drew laughter with their
sign that said "Our husbands were getting boring anyway."
Frank Cortez, 34, a baker from Cambridge, who pushed toward the
door, turned his head for a moment and looked down at the mass of
people behind him.
"My jaw dropped because I suddenly realized that everyone is
supporting this. The only word I have is overwhelming."
What was missing were the protesters, save for a small group of
sign-carrying opponents from Topeka, Kan. Shirley Phelps Roper,
a lawyer with the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, said the group
traveled to Massachusetts because it was the first state to legalize
same-sex marriages.
"This is where we need to be to remind these people that this
doesn't change anything," Roper said.
Even those picketers could not put a damper on the euphoria. When
police ushered Roper and her crew across Massachusetts Avenue to
the designated "First Amendment" zone, the crowd let out
a loud, mocking whoop. Spotting a sign that referred to gay marriage
with a picture of two dogs, Molly Mead, 54, of Cambridge, who had
arrived with her partner to get their application for marriage licenses,
said, "Am I the yellow dog or the red dog? I think I'm the
red dog."
Police at the nearby command post estimated 10,000 people on Massachusetts
Avenue, which was closed two blocks in each direction, and surrounding
streets. There were no arrests.
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A huge crowd of people gather in the late hours of 16 May at
City Hall in Cambridge, MA, just before same-sex couples were
allowed to receive applications for a marriage license. Hundreds
of same-sex couples were allowed into city hall in the early
morning hours of 17 May to apply for the marriage licenses in
the first state-sponsored recognition of gay marriage in the
country. Town halls in other Massachusetts cities will follow
suit later in the day. (AFP/Stan Honda) |
The more than 250 couples and their friends who managed to make
it into city hall, were greeted at a front table by the Cambridge
school superintendent Thomas Fowler-Finn and the director of public
health Harold Cox, both wearing tuxedos and handing out tickets
with numbers on them.
"We feel very lucky to have this," Cox said.
Inside, there were more people than could fit in the City Council
chamber or the overlooking balcony so couples waiting to apply for
marriage licenses clustered on stairways that had been draped with
bunting, some holding hands, some chatting with friends. They held
gifts they had been given from supporters outside -- flowers, Mardi
Gras style beads. Some were garishly flashing oversized rings on
their fingers.
"It's just crazy tonight," said David Rudewick of Somerville,
who was there with his partner, waiting to fill out the application,
surrounded by friends wearing white sashes and tinsel halos. "I
guess this is how straight people feel, to a certain degree."
But few straight people have gotten so much attention for the seemingly
mundane act of filling out paperwork.
Just minutes after midnight, after applause resonated through the
City Hall corridors, Marcia Hams, 56, and her partner, Susan Shepherd,
52, both of Cambridge, sat at a folding table draped with white
skirting and pored over their intent to marry application in a room
that was silent except for the sounds of a couple dozen cameras
clicking and the two of them murmuring quietly to each other.
"I'm shaking," one whispered to the other.
Some 15 feet away, pressed up against the plate glass door at the
back of City Hall, a handful of their friends stood with flowers,
waiting for them to emerge.
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