I’d always wanted to live on the rocky coast of Maine, and in August of 1994 I made the move. I had no job, I borrowed money, knew no one and was 41 years old.
I was also a lesbian who had left behind my hometown of Rochester, New York, many friends and a byline as a fashion writer.
Within a day of arriving, I attended a meeting of the Matlovich Society, an LGBT cultural group. The leaders of three LGBT newspapers were speaking. A group of four women published “Apex,” a radical monthly. I introduced myself to the photographer, Annette Dragon, and volunteered to help. Over the next year, Annette and I met for dinner every Monday night to discuss politics.
By 1995, dinner had turned to love.
While I worked at the University of Southern Maine and picked up the gig of restaurant reviewer for the Maine Sunday Telegram’s “Taste and Tell,” Annette managed the Portland camera shop Photo Market and photographed AIDS protests for ACT UP. (Her archive is housed at the LGBTQ+ Archives of the University of Southern Maine, Glickman Library, Portland.)
It was then we began thinking about marriage, which was not legal in any state. That didn’t stop us: On Oct. 4, 1997, we were married at the Danforth Inn before 75 guests.
The Portland Press Herald refused to publish our wedding announcement despite it being a service that people paid for.
We are the Phish fans of gay marriage: We travel to any venue where they will recognize us and give us another document to prove we are a couple. Once the City of Portland allowed us to register as domestic partners, we did. In 2000, we moved back to my hometown of Rochester and registered as domestic partners. In Oct. 2001, we traveled to Brattleboro, Vermont, for a civil union on the steps of the courthouse. A passing mailman yelled “mazel tov!” – it was thrilling to be recognized by a total stranger.
Ontario approved gay marriage in June of 2003. On Jan. 26, 2004, we were married in Niagara-on-the-Lake by a secular humanist. It was 2 degrees out. New York State acknowledged the wedding, and for the first time we were in receipt of spousal benefits through my job.
In what felt like a dream, New York state made gay marriage legal in June of 2011. Because our Canadian marriage was legally recognized in New York, we didn’t bother with another license, but we did celebrate.
Four years later, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. We wanted to legally marry in the United States and returned to Maine that July, this time to the town hall in Freeport. We had a party with friends who attended the original wedding.
In 2017, we heard the rumblings that gay marriage would be overturned in the U.S., leaving states to decide the fate of their citizens. We knew gay marriage would not be overturned by New York and, that October, we were legally married at Rochester City Hall by the city clerk.
This week, we’re celebrating 25 years of “marriage.” It has been a long, expensive, circuitous route and time has raced by.
But wait! Members of the Supreme Court are making threatening statements about the legality of gay marriage. So, stay tuned.
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