At same-sex marriage milestone, couples reflect on 20 years of love

By mzaxazm


Heidi and Gina Nortonsmith tied the knot 20 years ago this Friday in a Northampton, Massachusetts, park with their sons and close friends. They combined their individual surnames, Norton and Smith, which they engraved on silver bracelets for each family member.

Before they wed, Heidi and Gina were starting a family and looking for legal protections to raise their children. But they quickly found there weren’t many for same-sex couples. In the case of an emergency, only one parent, Heidi, who had carried the children, would be recognized. 

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Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the first same-sex marriages in the United States. Two Massachusetts couples reflect on how they felt at the time – and on what marriage equality has meant to them since.

“The law would consider Gina and our kids to be legal strangers. That was just really terrifying,” Heidi says.

That’s when the mothers joined six other couples suing the state in 2001 for the right to marry. The plaintiffs would eventually prevail, making Massachusetts the first state to allow same-sex marriage, with the first licenses granted May 17, 2004. The U.S. Supreme Court would later rule that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right in 2015.

“It’s important to mark the 20th anniversary and to celebrate it,” Gina says, “because it helps bring hope for the other work that is yet to be done.”

When Heidi and Gina Nortonsmith fought the state of Massachusetts for their right to marry in the early 2000s, they fought as a family. 

As plaintiffs in what would become a historic case, the two mothers waited at home every morning for months, anticipating news of a decision. A bag packed with clothes for their two sons, Avery and Quinn, stood ready if a drive from Northampton to Boston for a press conference would be necessary.

The parents were one of seven same-sex couples suing the state in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, a case that had been making its way through the Massachusetts court system since 2001. A Superior Court judge had ruled against the group in 2002. On a November morning in 2003, the long-awaited phone call about an appeal arrived.

Why We Wrote This

A story focused on

Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the first same-sex marriages in the United States. Two Massachusetts couples reflect on how they felt at the time – and on what marriage equality has meant to them since.

“It was a frantic couple of hours just trying to wrap our brains around what we needed to do to drive to Boston for a week with two young boys,” Gina recalls over Zoom. “We still didn’t know what the decision was. We just knew it was coming that day.”

The family was still on the road when the decision came down around 10 a.m. From a local radio station, they learned that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had ruled in their favor – making the state the first in the United States to allow same-sex marriage. Heidi and Gina planned to wed the first day it would be allowed, May 17, 2004.  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Gina (left) and Heidi Nortonsmith, and their son Avery, react to applause from the crowd outside City Hall after getting their marriage certificate in Northampton, Massachusetts, May 17, 2004. They got Probate and Family Court to waive the normal three-day wait for a marriage ceremony.

Massachusetts couples like Heidi and Gina, who are celebrating their 20th anniversaries this month, say the court’s decision ignited the nationwide fight to legalize same-sex marriage. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court would agree, declaring state bans unconstitutional in 2015. But it was the Bay State that first afforded legal protections to spouses and families. Along with long-fought-for nuptials, couples also got a sense of stability.

“It created a kind of security and safety for people that we didn’t used to have,” says Mary Ann Kowalski, who wed her partner, Aren Stone, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the first wave of marriages.



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