More on marriage
Let's begin with the Boston Globe article about Sunday night, which starts with my favorite photo so far, two men kissing while standing in line, with matching haircuts and tinsel circlets.
There were apparently 10,000 people gathered in Cambridge by midnight on Sunday, and that was just the official police estimate.
A couple of descriptions by people who were there on Sunday night: Special Agency's Peter attended to celebrate, and a couple named Brian and Aaron applied for a license. Excellent writeups both. (Though Brian and Aaron seem to be under the impression that all 10K people who were there celebrating were straight; I'm not sure what would make them think that.)
Most of the news coverage I've seen from major news sources is kind of poorly organized. I eventually pieced together the idea that in most places in MA, the relevant offices opened at 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning, but in Cambridge they opened up at midnight Sunday night. Things were further confused by the distinction between applying for a license and actually getting one; MA has a three-day waiting period, so a lot of people won't be officially legally married until Thursday, but it's possible to get that waiting period waived (I'm not sure what the criteria are), so some people (including all of the plaintiff couples in the case that brought about legalization) did get officially legally married on Monday.
Here are a couple photo galleries:
- Washington Post (though 2 of the 8 photos are of protestors, which seems a little odd given that I gather the protestor contingent was tiny)
- Suspension of Disbelief (a fair number of the pictures are pretty blurry, but still nice to see, especially the six-photo panorama sequence showing just how big the Sunday-night crowd was)
Most of the news coverage I've seen so far is a hodgepodge of assorted tidbits from all over the state, usually under a headline that has little to do with most of the content of the article. But for what it's worth, here are some articles. The first is the from New York Times; the others are from the Globe.
- With Festive Mood, Gay Weddings Begin in Massachusetts
- First gays marry; many seek licenses
- Survey finds women in majority (about two-thirds of the same-sex couples who applied for licenses on Monday were female)
- Some couples avoid 3-day wait to wed
- Groups hold out for public furor before acting (How's that for a bad headline? The idea is that the anti-same-sex-marriage groups figure they'll wait until the country rises up in outrage before they try to do any big protests. I hope they have a long wait.)
- R.I., Conn. may grant recognition
- 'It was a new experience for us' (more or less about the reactions of clerks in less high-profile places than Cambridge and Boston)
I think that's enough for now. I'd still like to find more photos; I'm sure they're out there. Please post links in comments to this entry. (But if you're reading this on LJ, follow the link back to my journal first.)
