First anniversary for gay marriage in Massachusetts

BOSTON — In the year since Massachusetts became the only state to permit gays and lesbians to wed, nearly 6,000 same-sex couples have exchanged marriage vows.

To commemorate the May 17 anniversary, many of those couples plan to attend a gala party at Boston's swank Copley Plaza Hotel and pose for a group photograph outside the Massachusetts statehouse. Among other festivities, the Boston suburb of Belmont plans an ice-cream social.

But those celebrations occur against a sobering national backdrop for supporters of same-sex marriage: A powerful coast-to-coast backlash has meant that rather than emerging as the legal trendsetter on marriage for gays and lesbians, Massachusetts has become a cultural anomaly.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have successfully marshaled forces to prevent other states from following suit. Legalizing same-sex marriage has provided a new sense of purpose to supporters of traditional marriage.

"Nothing has energized previously uninvolved citizens more than this issue," said Robert Knight, who traveled to Augusta as director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America in Washington.

"It has energized the pro-family movement because it has moved the debate beyond theory to actual images of men marrying men and women marrying women," Knight said. "And the realization has set in that this is about more than marriage. It will affect, eventually, every classroom in the country, as textbooks begin to portray two men as a marriage. And it will affect businesses as they are forced to subsidize homosexual relationships."

Moreover, said Knight: "The political impact alone has been enormous. It probably swung the election for George W. Bush."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, said, "In Congress and in statehouses nationwide, it's rhetorical and legislative open season" on gays and lesbians.

Foreman said same-sex marriage has provided his opponents "a wonderful organizing opportunity, because they are able to exploit so many people's lack of understanding about gay people, and their visceral feelings about the institution of marriage."

But Foreman said Massachusetts might be its own best advertisement for the harmlessness of same-sex marriage. In the past year, he noted, "Nobody in the legislature who supported gay marriage lost their jobs, and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. And the crops came up, and the locusts stayed away."

But amendments restricting marriage to a union between one man and one woman were overwhelmingly approved in all 13 states that took up measures in November. Four state legislatures approved similar amendments, and amendments banning same-sex marriage are pending in 16 other states.

Even in Massachusetts, the future legality of same-sex marriage is not guaranteed.

State Senate President Robert Travaglini, a Democrat, said he would convene a constitutional convention Aug. 24 to consider an amendment that would bar same-sex marriage but legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.

The bill won preliminary approval from the state legislature last year, but not in time to block the ruling by the state's highest court that allowed gay and lesbian couples to take out marriage licenses, beginning May 17, 2004. The court ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts advocacy group known as GLAD, for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

If the bill barring same-sex marriage passes the full legislature in the 2005-2006 session, the amendment still would need to be approved by voters in the November 2006 election.

Marty Rouse, campaign director for a group fighting to preserve same-sex marriage called MassEquality, said his organization is worried. "We currently do not have the votes to defeat this amendment," Rouse said. If lawmakers approved the bill, Rouse said he could not predict the outcome of a general election.

But according to GLAD, all the Massachusetts legislators who supported gay and lesbian marriage were returned to office last November. Two same-sex marriage opponents lost their legislative seats in 2004 primaries, and three supporters won special elections last month.