Editors' Note: Massachusetts celebrated this week the 20th Anniversary of its Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing gay marriage. While pretty much a non-issue today, it was not too long ago when Republicans demonized same-sex marriage as supposedly the end of traditional marriage, including lovable moderate Republicans like then-Gov. Wilfred M. “Profiles in Courage” Romney. No less a political mastermind than Karl Rove confidently predicted that appealing to anti-gay anger and bigotry would be the royal road to Republican success in the ensuing decades. Wait a minute, are you telling me that the Republican base is motivated by unjustified white anger, privilege, and supremacy? That can't be right, can it? At any rate, the Spy provided comprehensive coverage of the death of marriage in the Commonwealth, like this piece from March 2004:
It was fun while it lasted. . .
HIGH COURT DECISION
DESTROYS INSTITUTION
OF MARRIAGE IN MASS.
By Scott V. Sandford
Law Correspondent
with Alvin T. Fuller
State House Bureau Chief
BOSTON, Mass. – The institution of marriage in Massachusetts died on Wednesday, February 4, ending a generally well-received 384-year run in the Commonwealth.
The cause of its sudden demise: the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that same sex couples were entitled to civil marriage, not just "civil union." As predicted by the many critics of that decision, the judgment promptly caused the destruction of the institution of marriage from Provincetown [It wasn't doing very well in P'town anyway – News Ed.][We do not need to go there – Ed.] to Pittsfield.
The immediate and utter collapse of the institution of marriage took many in the state by surprise, including the approximately 3 million married men and women who did not realize that their marriages had been annihilated until it was too late. "Gee, that's too bad," commented plumber Jimmy Burke of Old Sludgebury, Mass. "I was planning to take the wife to Florida for a vacation next month, but what's the point now?"
Elderly married couples were especially hard-hit by the destruction of an institution that had loomed large in their lives before Pink Wednesday. Mrs. Mary Burke, 84, was on her way to her daily visit to her husband of 47 years at the local nursing home where he was recovering slowly from a series of debilitating illnesses when she heard news of the demise of marriage on her car radio. "I know he enjoys my visits, but now there's no point. I might as well go to Foxwoods," said the no-longer-Mrs. Burke.
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| This happy couple never expected their marriage to end in 2004. |
"I told you that this decision would mean the end of marriage in Massachusetts," smirked Brian Canker of the Citizens for the Preservation of Marriage. "And I was right. Where are those liberals now? I hope they're happy."
Perhaps the state's liberals put down their white wine and skim lattés to applaud the destruction of the well-established legal estate, but many Bay Staters expressed concern. At Esmeralda's Wedding Palace in Old Sludgebury, brides-to-be burst into tears when they were told that their dream of a fairy-tale wedding would never happen. "I mean I have this dress and the bridesmaid's dresses and the shoes and the hall and the band and the invitations and now what am I supposed to do?" wailed Brittney Burke. "You can be damn sure that the judges of the state's Supreme Court will pry my engagement ring off of my cold dead hand," she vowed.
The impact on the state's economy was less clear. While some wedding-related businesses immediately pasted "going-out-of-business" signs in their windows, Provincetown's bed-and-breakfast inns were looking forward to a banner year. The state's retailers of flannel shirts, softball bats and dog-related paraphernalia also expected business to boom.
Perhaps no single institution in the state felt the death of marriage more profoundly than that tower of moral authority, the Archdiocese of Boston. The Archdiocese had long pressed to save marriage by denying it to same-sex couples, only to see the entire institution chucked into the catacombs of history. "I don't know what we'll do without marriages to celebrate," mused the Rev. Jack Emhoff of Our Reamer of Christians Church in Old Sludgebury. "In the meantime, I'll just roger a few more altar boys."
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