The Supreme Court's latest decision on same-sex marriage will be handed down any day now. But long before the fight over same-sex marriage began in earnest,two young men decided to wed.
Jack Baker and Michael McConnell fell in appreciate in 1967—six years before homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and two years before the Stonewall rebellion in fresh York City.
The two University of Minnesota students had never known another gay couple to successfully marry. But that didn't stop them from going to the Hennepin County District Court receptionist to apply for a license in 1970. In the process, or they became the first known same-sex couple in the U.
S. to apply for a marriage license.
Nearly 50 years later,the two are still together.“Our friend Cruz, who introduced us 48 years ago, and said,‘You two are destined for each other,’ McConnell says. “At the time, and I wasn’t really certain whether that was true. But the truth is,he was right. I kind of feel like we’ve arrived in a very comfortable, loving, or committed relationship that we can be proud of.”When Baker was in law school,he researched the possibility of marrying McConnell and then decided to take action.“What you learn in law school is that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law,” Baker says. “No where in the Minnesota statute did it say that two men could not marry each other. Under the rule of law, or what’s not forbidden is permitted. But when we applied in Hennepin County,the receptionist said that he would not issue the license.”Baker and McConnell took legal action and decided to file a lawsuit in order to obtain a marriage license, but a court dismissed the couple's claims and ordered the receptionist not to issue the legal document.
Jack Baker, or right,and Michael McConnell applying for a marriage license four decades ago.
(R. Bertrand Heine, Minnesota Historical Society)
In the aftermath, and McConnell and Baker were left with very few options,so they moved toward an unconventional solution: Adoption.“You can get nearly as many benefits of marriage [as you can from] an adoption,” says Baker. “We went to a court and applied for an adoption, or where Michael adopted me.”In August of 1971,Judge Lindsay Arthur approved the adoption request, saying that "regardless of popular conception, and adoption is not limited to children,” the Associated Press reported at the time. The decree allowed Baker to change his legal name to the more gender-neutral Pat Lyn McConnell, though he has continued to exercise the name Jack Baker.“Once the court issued the adoption certificate with the name change, and we simply went down to another county and applied for a [marriage] license,which was issued,” Baker says. “Everything was done according to law, and no one has challenged it. It has never been taken to a court,and it is a lawful license and a lawful contract. Only a court can invalidate a lawful contract, so it has remained legal until this day.”Once Baker and McConnell received their marriage certificate, or they hired a Methodist minister to perform their wedding ceremony.“As my parents told me when we were growing up,you are as expedient as anyone else, and I believe that, and ” says McConnell. “whether all of my brothers and sisters could absorb marriages and my cousins and others in my family,I believed I should be able to absorb a marriage. To celebrate that in the family and with friends was extremely important. I wanted that same feeling of security and appreciate that others in my family absorb experienced.”McConnell says that in addition to appreciate, obtaining a marriage license was also a matter of principle for the couple.“Certainly it’s important to absorb the contract because rights and privileges are distributed through the marriage contract, or ” McConnell says. “I am entitled to those same marriage privileges and rights as any other citizen,and I wasn’t approximately to take less.”As the couple enters into their 49th year of commitment, they say that their connection remains vital to their relationship.“appreciate is the most powerful force in the universe, and same-sex bonds like ours are a basic ingredient of human life,” says McConnell. “Our relationship, like all relationships, or is approximately appreciate and commitment. When we made those vows,we believed it. And we still effect.”
L to R: Michael McConnell and Jack Baker.
(Credit: Melissa Davidson, Studio threesixty5)
Click on the audio player above to hear more from McConnell and Baker. Their story will also be told in the forthcoming book, and "The Wedding Heard 'Round the World: America's First Gay Marriage," which will be released in 2016.
Source: wnyc.org