Bonauto, who has been an attorney with GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, since 1990, said she was a “mess” of emotions at her clients’ wedding and started crying before the ceremony even started. But the most powerful moment, she recalled, came when the minister officially married the couple.
“In that packed church that day, when the minister said, ‘By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ — those are words no one had heard before — the place went wild,” Bonauto told NBC News. “I felt chills. I continue to feel chills when I hear that, because that is just such a statement of belonging in this culture. It’s not the only one, but boy, it was certainly a statement of non-belonging to be excluded from marriage.”
Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall wrote in the 4-3 majority opinion that paved the way for Compton and Wilson’s wedding, that marriage is “a vital social institution” that “imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.”
“The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry,” Marshall wrote. “We conclude that it may not. The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.”
She added that the state failed to identify “constitutionally adequate” reasons for denying same-sex couples the right to marry and that the court wasn’t tasked with answering questions about the morality of same-sex marriage.
“Barred access to the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community’s most rewarding and cherished institutions,” Marshall wrote. “That exclusion is incompatible with the constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.”