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Commentary
'I wanted to say forever and mean it': 20 years of marriage is a lot to be proud of
Twenty years ago this week, the first same-sex marriages took place in Massachusetts thanks to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that gave same-sex couples a path to marriage in 2003.
The court stayed its ruling for 180 days, and as May 17 approached, marriage was all I could think about — and all my friends could talk about. Everyone had an opinion on the SJC case — you couldn’t escape it. There was nothing like it happening in the country and the impact of the ruling felt monumental.
There was no threat to my personal safety. My job and housing were secure, and there were enough legal workarounds that I knew I was already luckier than any other LGBTQ+ person in our country’s history had been. But, I wanted to be married. I wanted to say forever and mean it. And be legally bound to that promise.
My paramedic girlfriend, Chris Rossi, was in nursing school at Simmons University, and I was newly pregnant. Dyke Night at Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain and dancing at Lava Bar had been replaced by clumsy attempts at sewing curtains for a nursery, looking at condo listings we couldn’t afford and my very real worries about Chris not being able to be in the delivery room with me — much less make decisions for me — in case of a medical emergency just because she wasn't my 'next of kin'.
In the days leading up to May 17, there were still no guarantees marriage licenses would be granted. One state representative wanted to impeach the chief justice. And a bill on Beacon Hill targeted the four justices who signed the majority opinion. But at 12:01 a.m., Cambridge City Hall opened its doors to LGBT+ couples applying for marriage licenses. By 1:30 a.m., 263 couples were there to apply for marriage licenses. I still get weepy thinking about how shocked I was — and how tentative it all seemed. Same-sex marriage felt surreal and, like anything else fresh and new in the world, also very fragile. We worried, thinking maybe there would be a reversal, some sort of roll back — or maybe they would stop issuing new licenses altogether.
Still, I wasted hours at my desk at work looking for just the right ring, and ultimately spent more money than I could afford. I picked out a plain and very “Chris-like” titanium band and proposed in a car in front of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital the following week.
For the record, it was a terrible proposal. I just blurted out, “Will you marry me.” I honestly could not stop myself — I was that excited. Chris seemed uncomfortable, not excited. She said yes, but I felt her reluctance. I knew it wasn’t just my approach. It wasn’t just the awkward location and rushed proposal. It was something else. But I was too nervous to press too hard and too excited to dwell on it.
We were married at the courthouse in Cambridge just a few months later on August 13, 2004. We basically eloped, because Chris and I are fairly private people and didn’t want an invitation to our wedding to feel like a political statement. Besides, we were in a race against the clock as our baby’s due date approached. I was four months pregnant and already enormous. We went to a pricey dinner afterwards and I was up all night with heartburn. This was pre-iPhone and I was too shy to ask a stranger to take a picture, so we don’t have any photos from that day. Last year I ordered a fresh copy of our marriage license as an anniversary gift for Chris since the old one was tattered. It is the only physical evidence the ceremony happened at all.
Charlotte (“Char”) Shields-Rossi was born on Christmas that year, five weeks earlier than we expected. “Who is the ‘real mom’?” hundreds of people have asked us since that day. "Both of us," we respond, from the moment she was born. Both of our names are on Char’s original birth certificate, which was as unprecedented as the marriage itself. Chris’s legal relationship to Charlotte was clear from the beginning, just like mine. No lawyers, or hoping or praying — we were equal parents from day one.
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This year, as our 20th anniversary approached, I finally felt brave enough to ask Chris why she looked less than thrilled when I proposed. Listening to us in the kitchen, Char teased Chris. “You didn’t want to marry Mom?!” Poor Chris, we had her cornered.
Marriage, Chris explained, was something she had never even considered before I proposed. I’m wary of telling her story for her, but I can safely say that she never wanted to carry a baby, she couldn’t imagine being someone’s wife, and because she had been given direct and indirect messages that being gay was bad, she had always assumed her life would be lonely. When I blurted out my rushed proposal, she looked uncomfortable because it challenged everything she had been taught to believe about herself and her future.
On the 20th anniversary of the first same-sex marriages in the United States, my wife will practice the guitar, and I will keep knitting a belated birthday gift. We will go for a run and complain about our aches (her back, my feet). We will try to be optimistic in an election year, and talk excitedly about Char being home for the summer after her first year away at college. Everything will be the same, and yet entirely different.
I owe an enormous debt to that SJC decision, and to the seven couples who took a risk and made their lives public to stand up for the rights of an entire community. I am not a leader. I could never have been the first. But I sure was ready to be near the front of the line.
A legal ruling carried us through our wedding ceremony, protecting our medical, financial and parental rights (as well as other rights big and small). But it’s the work my wife and I have put into our relationship that has made our marriage. It’s our commitment to each other that has made us a family. Twenty years is a lot to be proud of — both personally and politically.
Thank you, Massachusetts, for being on the cutting edge of equality. And thank you, Chris, for saying yes.
