Eighteen years ago I produced & directed this historic award winning short film shot in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004 when marriage equality began in the Commonwealth. Narrated by Arline Isaacson one of the architects of marriage equality it shows the first gay & lesbian marriages in both Cambridge & Boston. Then Obergefell won their case in the Supreme Court in 2015 & marriage equality became the law of the land. According to the 2019 U.S. Census Bureau there are 543,000 gay & lesbian married couple households & 469,000 households with same gender unmarried partners living together. This compares to 61.4 million opposite-sex married & 8 million opposite-sex unmarried partner households. In addition 191,000 children live with same gender parents. Now as Massachusetts celebrates its 18th anniversary we sadly sit in the crosshairs of the US Supreme Court considering dissolving our marriages. With the leaked draft by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. earlier this month suggesting that the Supreme Court may attempt to end the national right to abortion the justices could also roll back the right to marriage equality erasing decades of activism by our LGBTQ community. Far right radical Supreme Court Justices & politicians who oppose marriage equality could use Alito’s logic as guidance for new lawsuits attempting to overturn Obergefell. Like abortion rights, marriage equality could possibly be thrown back to state-by-state legislation or worse, especially as we deal with 240 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in 2022 across the country so far up from 41 in 2018. If the US Supreme Court succeeds in overturning Roe v Wade that takes away a woman’s right to control her own body our LGBTQ community will become extremely vulnerable to losing the rights we have worked so hard to gain. Let’s stay strong & keep this country moving forward.
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