Posts in Chronological order July 9, 2004>>Sept 30, 1976

Lavender Mag. July 9, 2004
"Home field advantage" for McConnell v USA ???
Baker and McConnell's early seed sowing may pay off nowBy Tim Campbell

All Rights Reserved July 9, 2004

Players for the first quarter, so to speak, of McConnell v USA, are now known and it looks like Baker and McConnell's 1970s seed sowing in Minnesota may give them a "home field" advantage."

McConnell claims $793 are due on a joint income-tax return for the year 2000. McConnell filed the joint return on the basis of a September, 1971 marriage and a marriage license obtained in Mankato, Minnesota. Baker had his name changed legally to Pat Lyn McConnell earlier that year in case he and McConnell were successful in attempts to adopt children. Consequently, the marriage license shows the names J. Michael McConnell and Pat Lyn McConnell. Authorities tried and failed to prove them guilty of fraud in this transaction.

McConnell is the first gay to sue the Federal Government, specifically, the Bush administration and the Internal Revenue Service, for income-tax benefits. It will be a year or two before the same-sex couples married in Massachusetts this year can file.

McConnell v USA is also less broad than the multiple-plaintiff lawsuits envisioned when the marriages in Massachusetts go to court.

This case is also different because the Baker-McConnell marriage happened before DOMA. The marriages in Massachusetts happened after DOMA.

McConnell v USA does not seek to overthrow the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in its entirety. It only seeks a finding that DOMA does not apply in this one case.

The opposition: Heffelfinger

The players in the case at this level of adjudication, besides Baker and McConnell, are Tom Heffelfinger, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, and Judge Joan N. Ericksen, a U.S. District Judge for Minnesota.

Heffelfinger is believed to be a socially liberal Republican. A handful of gay activists including this reporter, remember meeting him at a fundraiser for gay rights in the home of his maternal cousin, Phil Willkie. Willkie published the James White Review, a national gay literary review out of Minneapolis, for many years.

In the early `80s, Willkie also championed a group of about eight men arrested in an infamous raid of a popular gay bathhouse. Heffelfinger and Willkie's great uncle and grandfather, respectively, Wendell Willkie, was a the 1940 Republican nominee for president against Frnaklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Heffelfingers are Pillsbury money, and someone in that clan married into the Cargill fortune during the '80s. The bottom line here is Heffelfinger doesn’t necessarily work for a living. If he does not go along with the Republican extreme right and pisses off Bush and crowd, his grandkids will not go hungry.

The referee: Judge Joan N Ericksen

Since McConnell has asked for trial by judge rather by jury, Judge Joan N. Ericsen is the person who will have to be convinced the McConnell's 1971 marriage is valid and that DOMA does not apply here.

According to a publicly available resume, Judge Joan Ericksen (formerly Ericksen-Lancaster) was born in 1954. She entered undergraduate college at St. Olaf's in 1972, that is, while Baker and McConnell were in the lime-light for the first time.

Ericksen went to the University of Minnesota law school from 1977 through 1981 and graduated Juris Doctor cum laude. She undoubtedly had law professors who discussed gay marriage. Some of them may even have argued in class that the Minnesota Supreme Court "done Baker and McConnell wrong."

In spite of the fact that decisions by first level federal judges usually are not precedent setting, Professor Arthur Leonard of New York Law School and editor of Lesbian/Gay Law Notes tells us that if Judge Ericksen ruled that DOMA does not apply to marriages contracted before 1996, "and went on to find, in a well-reasoned discussion, that under the Internal Revenue Code, a validly contracted same-sex marriage should be recognized for federal tax purposes, then the opinion could be very helpful to other same-sex couples IF (Leonard’s emphasis) the federal courts ultimately hold DOMA unconstitutional."

So what’s the likelihood Judge Ericksen might pen such a gay-friendly order? Hard to say. She certainly has the education and intellect to write a well-reasoned opinion. No doubt about that.

Another factor that might help is that Ericksen is a recent divorcee. Could she have some strong personal feelings about the very institution of marriage? I'll let the reader decide that.

On the darker side, Ericksen was appointed by George W. Bush just two years ago. That's not a lot of experience as it goes with federal judges.

In addition, there are some lacunae years in her resume that could have been spent doing campaign work for George W. Bush. Some observes say this is not uncommon in the background of our judges. Shhhsss. Don't tell the children. This reporter did not have time to dig any further in this direction.

Professor Leonard offered these words of possible encouragement when we were discussing Republican office holders in general: "All is not necessarily lost. Some Bush appointees have actually issued pro-gay opinions. For example, there is a Bush-appointed federal judge in Tennessee who issued a terrific opinion in support of a gay high school student group recently. So they are not all knee-jerk, anti-gay ideologues."

Leonard also notes importantly that: "Any judicial ruling involving claims for recognition asserted by same-sex couples is significant in light of the current situation."

Let's exit with this observation from many years ago (1971 or 1972) at a gay rights group discussion led by both Baker and McConnell at the University of Minnesota, Morris Campus. One of them said and I quote: "Minnesota is an ideal setting in which to test the waters for gay rights progress. It's a small state with all the elements that make up the larger nation."

Developments in McConnell v USA may just prove them right. Their lawsuit could not open in a more fortunate setting.

END

[Tim Campbell published the GLC Voice newspaper in Minneapolis from 1979-1992. E-mail timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com]

[Baker and McConnell website: www.may-18-1970.org.]
[Fan club e-mail: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com]
[Related blog: timcampbellxyx@blogspot.com]
timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo



Miami Herald June 28, 2004 Newlyweds show gay pride
NATIONWIDE PARADES
Newlyweds show gay pride

Thousands of gay men and lesbians joined pride parades in cities across the country, optimistic that laws permitting same-sex marriages will spread.


SAN FRANCISCO - (AP) -- The party still had its traditional leather-clad legions and dramatic drag queens, but Sunday's gay pride parade featured marchers even more radical -- married same-sex couples.

Gay and lesbian newlyweds hoisting poster-size reproductions of their marriage licenses had a starring role at San Francisco's 34th annual parade. They were joined by Mayor Gavin Newsom and others who helped promote same-sex unions in the history-making wedding march at City Hall earlier this year.

Other cities holding parades Sunday included Atlanta, Seattle and New York, where gay pride participants danced down Fifth Avenue and waved rainbow flags in celebration.

Newsom, who helped push the marriage debate onto the nation's agenda shortly after taking office, received the kind of reception usually reserved for rock stars and matinee idols, with shouts of ''We love you Gavin'' and ''Ga-vin! Ga-vin! Ga-vin!'' rising from the crowd as he passed.

''It took courage to be in office such a short time and take the stance he did,'' said Tony Sosha, who marched with his new husband, Ens Layante.

An official crowd estimate was unavailable, but tens of thousands of people typically attend what organizers dub California's largest public event.

San Francisco issued more than 4,000 marriage licenses earlier this year before the state Supreme Court intervened.

Floats featuring couples in wedding finery followed Newsom and San Francisco assessor Mabel Teng. The parade got rolling behind a contingent of Dykes on Bikes, with some of the motorcycle-riding lesbians wearing veils.

''Equality has always been a part of [the parade]. This is just the next evolution,'' said Teddy Witherington, executive director of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade Committee.

While Massachusetts became the only U.S. state to legally recognize same-sex marriages last month following a ruling by its Supreme Judicial Court, gay pride revelers said they expect New York and other states to follow suit.

With Congress set to vote within weeks on a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, the issue received prominent treatment at gay pride parades nationwide.

''Even 10 years ago I would have said that's the wrong issue,'' said Ed Glorius, at New York's parade with his arms entwined around his partner, Dwight Pollard, whom he married at a Manhattan restaurant last week. ``And now I feel very differently.''

The Manhattan parade featured marching bands, politicians including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, as always, plenty of men wearing G-strings and towering heels.

The parade -- officially called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March -- commemorates the Stonewall uprising of 1969, when patrons of a gay bar resisted a police raid.

Lavender Mag. June 11, 2004 Quest Column on D Carpenter
Dale Carpenter's analysis too gloomy
By Tim Campbell
© June 11, 2004<>

Photo here

Dale Carpenter, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in sexual-orientation law, gets quoted a lot these days in articles about the fight for legal gay marriage. Unfortunately, a lot of Carpenter's facts and analysis are simply wrong.

For example, Carpenter told Jack Spillane, a reporter for the Standard-Times in South Florida, "Even gay activists who endorsed the concept [of gay marriage] in the 1970s and '80s saw it as a longer-term goal....It was seen as a loser, a guaranteed loser."

Who in hades does Carpenter mean by "gay activists?"

I lived through those years as an instructor at the University of Minnesota. Jack Baker and Mike McConnell were known as "gay activists." I was known as a gay activist. Koreen Phelps was known as a gay activist.

We all believed we would win gay rights, sooner, not later.

People who were out of the closet were activists. People who were not out insisted they were not activists. They hated that word.

The people who called gay marriage a "loser" were low-level, local Democratic politicians seeking public office. They were trying to coopt the gay-rights movement by promising they would take care of gays eventually. They thought "gay activist" was a dirty name.

The primary culprit was University of Minnesota history professor Allan Spear. He also liked to call Baker and McConnell "the lunatic fringe." Ironically, Spear won his first election to the Minnesota Senate only because Jack Baker endorsed him. (See correction below.)

I can't believe Carpenter is now canonizing Spear as a gay historian and a "gay activist." That's really queer.

Spear was no activist. He was dragging his feet back then. Today, his tail is in Jurassic Park. Why, he's been in a relationship with the same guy about 20 years and never lifted a hand to protect that relationship legally.

In many places, Carpenter predicts that the courts are going to leave gay marriage up to the states. He claims McConnell v. USA, the new lawsuit filed by McConnell and Baker against the Bush Administration and the IRS, is a "loser."

Sound familiar?

Two things are self-evident.

First, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act has already federalized the gay-marriage issue. It's too late for the courts to leave it to the states. Second, the current U.S. Supreme Court already bit the bullet on the hardest gay-rights issue: the sodomy laws. Nobody bats an eye over sodomy anymore. We call it a "Lewinsky" and chuckle. Clinton did at least that for gay rights!

Let me predict that long-term gay relationships like Baker and McConnell's are simply not going to freak out this Supreme Court. It may even be impressed with their 38 years together, as are most fair-minded people today. Baker and McConnell dignify the very idea of marriage.

Most importantly, I do not buy Carpenter's analysis of gay history.

Yes, AIDS may have helped gay marriage gain popularity. Yes, a lesbian baby boom may have helped lesbian marriage gain popularity. Still, Carpenter misses the biggest cause: Gay marriage is popular now because closetry is dead. Contemporary gays and lesbians instinctively seek recognition of their relationships, just like all other lovers.

Hallelujah!

Correction: Jack Baker endorsed Allan Spear the first time he ran for officer, that was for the Minnesota House, not the Minnesota Senate.

Allan Spear's Letter
Friday, June 25, 2004
Letters/Lavender June 25, 2004

I am never quite sure where Tim Campbell is coming from. Several months ago, he called me from his home in Houston, and we had a long, cordial conversation. I assumed that our disagreements were in the past.

Now, apropros of nothing I have done or said in the past 30 years, he has written a vitrolic and inaccurate attack on me [Lavender, June 11].

Let me correct a few of his statements.

First, I never opposed gay marriage.

I admired Jack Baker and Mike McConnell's pioneer efforts, and worked with them in 1972 at the DFL State Convention to pass a gay marriage plank in the party platform.

I did believe that it was premature in the 1970s to push gay marriage at the State Legislature, and I remain convinced of the soundness of that judgment.

It is true that Jack Baker endorsed me for the State Senate in 1972, and I welcomed and valued his support, along with that of hundreds of other people who worked in that campaign.

But to suggest that I was elected "only" because of Jack's endorsement is ludicrous. If that were true, it would be hard to explain how I won by a much larger margin in 1976, when Jack was actively working for my opponent.

Finally, Tim knows nothing about what my partner and I have done to legally protect our relationship.

That is a personal matter that I certainly have never discussed with Tim Campbell.

Tim, from one aging gay activist to another: Isn't it time to call a truce? You and I have both, in our own different ways, worked hard for many years for GLBT rights. Why rehash these ancient disputes? We have far more dangerous enemies to fight than each other.

—ALLAN H. SPEAR

Tim Campbell resonds to Allan Spear(Expected to appear July 9, 2004 in Lavender)

Let me refresh Allan Spear's memory of our telephone conversation. I specifically asked him whether he and Jun had gone anywhere where gay marriages are allowed or done anything similar to protect their relationship. He said "No." Allan then went on to add some time later. "We don't need anything like that."

Allan, you even told me you and Jun had thought about doing something, but never had, saying "Just laziness, I guess." Does this jog your memory now?

The first thing I learned about Allan Spear was from Steve Endean who told me Allan strongly opposed Jack and Mike's marriage. I heard Allan himself refer to that marriage and Jack Baker as the "lunatic fringe."

I keep attacking Spear and Endean because people continue quoting them saying nasty things about Baker and McConnell. Usually the quotes are anonymous, off the record, however, and I have to suppose it's Allan.

I do admit that Spear has rarely criticised me in public. But then, I've usually had the power of the press in my hands.

Like Allan Spear, I'd like to let by-gones be by-gones. To this end I extend this invitation to Allan and to Jun. Join the First Gay Couple Fan Club. This means nothing more than that you hope Baker and McConnell win "McConnell v USA" and finally get their same-sex union recognized.

The Fan Club wants to tell the press, if ever asked, how many supporters Jack and Mike have. We want to be able to give a hard number, not just something like "under 250 million."

Allan, to end old feuds and move on, please send an email with the words "Count me" or "Count us" in the subject line to firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com. Jun, you can do so also. We'd love to have you both.

Kisses,
Tim Campbell

OutSmart Mag June 4, 2004 Dale Carpenter: Lunatic?
MORE OF US?
Same-gender marriage will breed queer folk, opponents fear

OutRightby Dale Carpenter

Will gay marriage produce more homosexuals? For many who oppose gay marriage, the prospect that it will lead more people to homosexuality is a powerful (if often unstated) reason to oppose it. They need not fear: Gay marriage is unlikely to have that effect, though it will probably make it seem as if there are more homosexuals. But even if gay marriage did have the effect of increasing the number of homosexuals in the population, that would not be reason by itself to oppose gay marriage.

Gay marriage will likely affect public attitudes about homosexuality. Gays will be seen in stable, committed, long-term relationships. Those relationships will enjoy as much respect as the law can provide because they will be accorded rights, privileges, and protections equal to heterosexual marriages. They will be called marriages, both in the law and in our culture. This will provide a language of ritual in which to speak about gay relationships that is familiar to straight Americans. Gay couples will no longer be “partners,” but spouses or husbands or wives. Gay couples will have engagements, weddings, and honeymoons. These words will be used, for the first time, without winks and nods, without knowing exaggeration.

We can expect, therefore, that over time gay marriage will have the effect of softening opposition to homosexuality in general. It will help alleviate some of the stigma that attaches to homosexuality.

That is not the only, or even the primary, reason to support gay marriage. The better reasons to support it are to encourage long-term coupling among gay men and women, to reduce the individual and social miseries and costs often associated with being single, to protect existing gay couples from significant legal and social disadvantage, and to support gay families in which children are raised. But reducing the hatred of homosexuals will certainly be a welcome consequence of recognizing gay marriages.

For some, however, this positive byproduct of gay marriage carries a significant risk. Gay marriage, in this view, will be a subsidy for homosexuality. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something you get more of it. Similarly, stigma is now part of the cost of homosexuality. Reduce the cost of something and you get more demand for it. Presto, more homosexuals.

Everything we have learned about human sexual orientation over the past half century confounds this seemingly logical conclusion. Human sexual orientation appears to be both unchosen and unchangeable. Whether it is biologically or genetically determined, or simply set at a very young age, sexual orientation does not respond to social influences designed to lead it in a different direction. Efforts to “treat” or to “convert” homosexuals have a long history of failure and no reliable evidence of success.

Further, we have no good evidence for the existence of “waverers,” people whose sexual orientation is on the line between homosexuality and heterosexuality and who may be led in one direction or the other by social and personal influences. Homosexuals are not created by seduction, recruitment, or propaganda.

As conservative legal scholar and federal judge Richard Posner has concluded, homosexuality appears “to be no more common in tolerant than in repressive societies.” For example, there is no evidence that the relative acceptance of homosexuality in the Netherlands and Belgium, both of which recognize gay marriage, has caused an increase in the number of homosexuals.

So gay marriage will not likely increase the number of homosexuals. It will, however, increase levels of happiness among existing homosexuals. How could that be a bad thing?

By helping to reduce the stigma of homosexuality, gay marriage will also increase the proportion of homosexuals who are open and honest about their sexual orientation. That’s because the potential costs of being out—like losing a job, alienating family members and friends, and risking hate violence—will be reduced. So after gay marriage is recognized, it may well seem there are more homosexuals than before.

Perhaps, however, even if gay marriage does not increase the number of homosexuals, it will increase the amount of homosexual sexual activity. Again, this would count as a significant cost of gay marriage to many who oppose it.

Will gay marriage lead to an increase in homosexual sexual activity? It is hard to say. On the one hand, we may conjecture that the stigma-reducing effect of gay marriage may lead to more homosexual experimentation, and at a younger age, by homosexuals and even by heterosexuals.

On the other hand, gay marriage may reduce homosexual activity in other ways. As I have argued, gay marriage would not be a subsidy for homosexuality in general because sexual orientation is immune to a system of rewards and punishments.

But gay marriage will be a subsidy for homosexual monogamy. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something, you get more of it.
So the overall effect of gay marriage may be neither a net gain nor a net loss in homosexual activity.

All of this discussion is predicated on the assumption that there is something bad about homosexuality; otherwise, there would be nothing to fear from an increase in the number of homosexuals or homosexual activity.

And the judgment that homosexuality is somehow bad rests, in turn, on essentially religious grounds. Try as they might to resist this characterization of their position, religion is what opponents of gay marriage must ultimately rest their case upon.

Writing from the conservative end of the spectrum, Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994, when he lived in Houston. Now residing in Minneapolis, Carpenter is a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

June 5, 2004 Campbell responds to Carpenter
Lunatic fringe OutRight brain cells
To the Editor:

Dale Carpenter writes the nuttiest thing I ever heard in his OutRIGHT op-ed piece entitled "More of Us" in the June issue of OutSmart Magazine. Carpenter writes: "For many who oppose gay marriage, the prospect that it will lead more people to homosexuality is a powerful (if often unstated) reason to oppose it."

What is Carpenter, some kind of mind reader? He knows things the right is fearing but not talking about? Hey, the right is not a shy, inarticulate crowd. How can the right claim gay is wrong because it doesn’t make more of us--then turn around and fear it does make more of us? Unlikely. Even the most extreme right-winger know heterosex, not marriage, makes more of us.

The only people in denial about that are those few, like Carpenter, who claim there's a contemporary "lesbian baby boom." Carpenter's schizy. On one hand he claims to want to assuage right wing fears, on the other, he invents concepts and vocabulary to flare them up. Go figure.

It seems to me Carpenter is just making up stuff he can refute with his lunatic fringe "OutRight" brain cells. What’s worse, OutSmart Magazine lets him go on for about a thousand words refuting this bogus theory. I wonder how many right wingers read this small circulation Houston gay publication. Zero to four? Is Carpenter’s preaching doo-doo to the choir?

Here’s the right’s real unspoken fear: the right fears homosexuality because acceptance of gays makes them irrelevant. Even worse, conservative gays often are doing their best to slow down progress. Could they too fear becoming irrelevant?

Tim Campbell, CEO
Email: FirstGayCoupleFanClub@yahoo.com
Email: timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
Blog: www.timcampbell.blogspot.com
Baker-McConnell website: www.may-18-1970.org

GLBTPress, June 3, 2004 News release + comments by Theissen
First gay married couple web site and fan club launched
From news release.

Tim Campbell, CEO, announces the formation of a fan club for Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, the first gay couple to marry way back in the early 1970s. <>

Why now? Because J. Michael McConnell filed a lawsuit in federal court just this past May 18, 2004 suing the Bush administration and the Internal Revenue Service because they won’t allow him to file a joint income-tax return.

The IRS wrote McConnell that <> McConnell filed his complaint on the thirty-fourth anniversary of the beginning of the fight for legal gay marriage in the United States.

The fan club is actively recruiting more fans. To join please send an e-mail which says <> to firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com

Baker and McConnell also now have their very own web site. The purpose of the web site is to answer all the frequently asked questions about their early history. Many readers of today’s press, particularly of the gay press, were not even born back then.

The first gay couple’s web site address is www.May-18-1970.org. It is maintained by Ken Bronson out of Chicago. Baker and McConnell have called the site <> As the reader may have noticed, May 18, 1970 is the date Baker and McConnell first applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Unfortunately, a lowly clerk refused to issue them a marriage license. The Minnesota Supreme Court later upheld that clerk and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the issue. It’s opinion was curt: the couple’s early lawsuit lacked a “substantial federal question,” said the Warren Burger bunch.

The time is right now for a new go at the Supreme Court because younger people, so called <> are sitting on federal courts now. Moreover, a younger Supreme Court itself has already bit the bullet on sodomy laws. It’s not ok to discriminate with laws vis a vis “Lewinskis, ” to use a euphemism.

The U.S. Congress itself has also helped to <> this question. The passed the infamous federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) back in 1996.

Finally, the Bush administration itself forced this lawsuit when it told the IRS clerk to discriminate against McConnell and to write to him that <> They even made the word <> plural.

Naturally, everyone today can see that gay marriage is a very substantial federal question.
Fortunately, McConnell and Baker applied a second time for a marriage license, down in Mankato, in southern Minnesota. The license was granted and Baker and McConnell got married using it on Setptember 3, `971

To do that, Jack Baker changed his name legally to <> He is still publicly known as <> That’s the name he went by when the students at the University of Minnesota elected and reelected him student body president. Baker took the legal last name McConnell because the couple were thinking about adopting children. No courts have examined the McConnells’ Mankato marriage license. It is the one the one the Bush administration is refusing to honor now.

Back when Baker and McConnell first tried to get married, they generated a frenzy of news coverage. This led the University of Minnesota to deny McConnell a job he had in fact already been offered. In addition, the Minnesota Bar Association refused to grant Baker a license to practice law. Baker triumphed over the Bar Association and got his license in spite of them. McConnell, however, was less fortunate. He couldn’t beat the mamouth University of Minnesota. To this day it is exempt from anti-discrimination laws.


For more information about the early years go to the new website: www.may-18-1970.org.

Please do not contact the fan club or Baker and McConnell with predictable frequently asked questions (faqs) about the early years. Everybody is already exhausted from answering and reanswering those faqs. Thanks.

The FirstGayCoupleFan Club is neither endorsed nor opposed by Baker and McConnell. They do not control it and they do not contribute to it financially.

BRAD THEISSEN'S COMMENTS*
*
*


Campbell Responds to Theissen June 4, 2004
Brad Theissen's remarks absolutely succulent!

Dear Brad Theissen:
In the June 3 issue of GLBT Press, I found the long commentary about me which you attached anonymously a news release about Jack Baker and Mike McConnell succulent. Absolutely succulent!

I plead guilty as far as the North American Man/Boy Love Association goes. I believe NAMBLA is entitled to free speech like every other controversial and articulate entity.

I plead guilty to smacking on Barbara Carlson's front door with a orange traffic cone. Remember, she was intriguing to close down the bathhouses.

I plead not guilty to publishing an ugly likeness of any editor of Equal Time. I thought the image was flattering.

I was, however, perplexed by charges that I claim AIDS was spread by pork not sex. I do remember publishing articles by other controversial writers related to this theme. Just recently, there has been a lot in the news about new diseases coming from birds and poultry. I'd publish those articles too if there were a handful of scientists claiming AIDS was coming from birds and poultry. I truly believed the readership of the GLC Voice could handle it. I apologize if I caused you to get aids by abstaining from pork but eating your heart out at the baths. Get someone to explain that too you.

But I never doubted sex spread AIDS. I remember remarking at Bruce Brockway's memorial service that the only evidence that AIDS was a gay virus was that it went straight for the best looking men in the room. Remember Bruce, the sweetheart who helped me start the GLC Voice. Remember his publication "Positively Gay"? Odd that he picked that name. Remember when the saying was in?

Perhaps someone with the initials "BT" is suffering from some angst of his own...about sex.

But thanks for running the news release. Actions speak louder than words.

Kisses,
Tim Campbell
Houston, TX

Email: timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com
Web site: www.may-18-1970.org
Fan email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com



To MN Daily re Dale Carpenter, Sitcom Prof
U of M harbors a sitcom-worthy professor
By Tim Campbell
June 3, 2004

The University of Minnesota currently gives sanctuary to professor whose character could have been dreamed up by a drag queen for a late evening sitcom.

In a world where most professors are suspected, accused or known to be liberal, Communist leaning, co-ed chasing, heterosexual Democrats—in that same context—this professor presents as a conservative, Republican, homosexual expert on sexual orientation law. If that sounds pretty far left, poach this: The guy’s published e-mail name is “OutRIGHT.” Go figure!

I’m talking about Professor Dale Carpenter. I’ve seen him expounding on gay rights history and making negative predictions about Jack Baker and Mike McConnell’s chances of getting their 1971 same-sex marriage recognized by the courts in the Minnesota Daily and several publications elsewhere.

Carpenter pisses me off by repeatedly presenting Baker and McConnell as all around losers. The fact of the matter is, after getting married to a man, Baker won two elections and served for two years as student body president at the University of Minnesota. At the time, U of M had the largest student body in the country, about 40,000 students. Since the U is a state agency, this made Baker the first openly gay elected state office holder in the country, perhaps in the world.

Baker also won a battle with the Minnesota Board of Bar Examiners which sought to deny him a law license.

Baker won against the State of Minnesota when it asked a grand jury to indict him for actually getting a marriage license in Mankato while there was still litigation in process over his first attempt to get a marriage license in Minneapolis. That grand jury refused to indict. They saw no infraction of law.

Baker is still practicing corporate law in the State of Minnesota and has recently filed a suit in U.S. District Court, federal court, representing his spouse, J. Michael McConnell in a case against the Bush administration and the IRS. Baker is no loser. I don’t think he will lose this case.

But the most absurd theory Professor Carpenter espouses is articulated in a piece in the Standard-Times in south Florida on February 15. That article probably spun off the Minnesota Daily piece (January 29) in which Josh Verges quoted Carpenter.

Carpenter theorizes that the current popularity of gay marriage stems from three causes: AIDS, a lesbian baby-boom, and an op-ed piece by conservative gay journalist Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic. That’s all sitcom stuff.

One, I don’t know any gays who got married because of AIDS. AIDS is again on the rise among younger gay men. Nobody’s getting married young any more, least of all hot young gay men.

Two, it’s completely impossible to document any lesbian baby-boom. Nobody knows how many lesbian couples with children there were before 1970 or before AIDS. Not only that, there is a big scientific problem to overcome before real lesbians can have babies. Clearly those who imagine a lesbian baby-boom are calling a lot of bisexuals lesbians. The problem there is that bisexuals are like swing voters, you have to re-court them every election.

Three, Andrew Sullivan’s piece in The New Republic had no mass effect in the gay men’s community. I’d guess 99.5% of gays and lesbians never saw an issue of The New Republic. You, dear reader, probably never heard of it before. Am I right?

Carpenter’s bias seems to me to have this goal: he wants to steal credit for the impact of Jack Baker and Mike McConnell’s 1971 marriage and give it to lesbians and gay conservatives. That’s really sitcom stuff. Politically correct, perhaps, but still laughable.

The real cause of the obvious gay marriage boom is the death of closetry. Out of the closet gay couples now instinctively seek recognition for their relations just like lovers everywhere and through all times. Smell the coffee, Carpenter.

If there’s any oversight committee at the University of Minnesota that investigates allegations of unpoliced poop dropped by professors, let them pull out their scoopers now.

Tim Campbell
timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com
www.timcampbellxyx@blogspot.com
Baker-McConnell info: www.may-18-1970.org


[Tim Campbell taught French at the U of M from 1970-72, i.e., while Jack Baker served as student body president here. He also published the gay oriented GLC Voice newspaper in Minneapolis from 1979-92. He now lives in Houston.]

Lavender Mag May 28, 2004
IRS refuses joint return of gay couple
Long silence of first gay married couple illuminated

By Tim Campbell
Copyright May 28, 2004
.
LAVENDER

ENTERING OUR 10TH YEAR! • VOLUME 9 • ISSUE 235 • MAY 28–JUNE 10, 2004

Jack Baker and Michael McConnell in 1971.
For more information on Baker and McConnell, visit www.may-18-1970.org. To help start a first couple's fan club, Email your name and address to: www.firstcouplexyxy@yahoo.com.


First Gay Married Couple Sues U.S. Government Over IRS Ruling
Long Silence of Baker and McConnell Illuminated
BY TIM CAMPBELL
© MAY 6, 2004
PHOTO BY CHARLOTTE BROOKS FOR LOOK MAGAZINE



ack Baker and J. Michael McConnell have taken on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in a legal action filed in federal court in Minneapolis on May 18—the 34th anniversary of their application for a marriage license. That application launched the fight for legal same-sex marriage in the United States and throughout the world.

The legal action itself comes in the form of a civil complaint filed by McConnell against the United States of America in U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota, located in Minneapolis. The complaint seeks recovery of $793.28 allegedly assessed and collected illegally from McConnell.

Baker is serving as his spouse's attorney.

McConnell bases his right to file a joint return on a license issued to the couple in 1971 in Mankato, Minnesota, followed by a marriage performed September 3, 1971 and legally registered by the minister who officiated. On that license, Baker is named as Pat Lyn McConnell, after a legal name change petitioned in case the couple acquired children.

Although the IRS asked for a copy of the couple's marriage license before denying the joint return, it did not rule that license was invalid. The letter of rejection stated simply: "The Federal Government does not recognize same-sex marriages."

Media Relations for the IRS in Washington, D.C., forwarded this reporter a copy of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as an explanation for this federal policy being implemented for the very first time in this instance.

When asked whether the denial of these financial benefits had been cleared all the way up to President George W. Bush, IRS Media relations referred the question to the Public Affairs Department of the U.S. Treasury. As of this writing, that agency has not responded to this reporter's question.

Some time back, the U.S. Office of General Accounting published an inventory of 1,096 legal benefits accruing from marital status in the United States. Treasury and Accounting are sister agencies.

Baker and McConnell filed a joint return once before, in 1971. The IRS turned them down, as expected.

The couple decided at that time to hang things up until the '70s generation was sitting on federal benches. Students of that generation elected Baker president of the student body at the University of Minnesota, knowing full well that he considered McConnell his spouse.

McConnell recently was nominated for The New York Times Librarian of the Year Award and given a certificate of recognition by Minnesota officials. Those officials probably have known for 34 years now that McConnell considers Baker his spouse.

Both Baker and McConnell are now in their early 60s. They have been together 38 years, 33 of those legally married, they claim. Many of their generation now sit in high places. Some of them even have been called "activist judges" by President Bush.

Baker, acting as legal counsel for McConnell, notes that the IRS did not maintain that the couple's marriage was invalid. That issue was debated in communications prior to rejection of the joint return.

U.S. government officials have promised since 1996 to refuse to honor gay marriages. Now, however, federal officials finally have gone and done it.

McConnell versus the U.S. Government forces the question: What will our federal courts do now?




Star Tribune, May 20, 2004 Doug Grow Column + response
Doug Grow:
Gay-marriage pioneers, again

By Doug Grow
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Published May 20, 2004

Long before gay marriage became a sizzling contemporary issue, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell were receiving a Minnesota marriage license and saying their vows before a Methodist minister.

In 1971, that license and marriage were invalidated by the state and, over time, the couple slipped -- or got pushed -- into the background of the gay rights movement.

But on Tuesday, the 34th anniversary of their first attempt to file for a marriage license, Baker and McConnell were making news again. They filed suit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, claiming that the Internal Revenue Service has violated their right to due process by refusing to allow them to file a joint tax return.

"Their suit is based on the fact they've had an enduring relationship after having a license granted by the state in a marriage solemnized by a clergyman," said attorney Larry Leventhal, who is assisting the couple in the suit.

The suit revolves around the tax return that McConnell filed for 2000. In 2003, he attempted to amend that return by changing his status from single to married, filing a joint return. They say the changed status meant that the IRS owed a refund of $793.28.

But, they say, the IRS rejected that claim with a blunt letter: "The Federal Government does not recognize same-sex marriages."

However, McConnell and Baker believe that the IRS never ruled on the validity of their license, which predates such things as the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. They argue that their efforts to marry should not have been blocked in the 1970s because same-sex marriage was not specifically prohibited by state or federal law.

This all gets pretty technical. And it doesn't help that Baker and McConnell aren't talking. Though once the subject of articles in national publications, the two have had an aversion to the media for years.

But one thing is clear: They're on their own in this action. Despite being pioneers in gay-rights causes, Baker and McConnell have been isolated from most gay activist groups for a long time. According to one longtime gay leader, Baker, especially, is seen as "too far out there."

According to Tim Campbell, a longtime friend of the couple and the publisher of the defunct newspaper GLC Voice, civil-rights organizations have refused to support this effort to gain legal standing for gay relationships.

"This suit is both symbolically powerful and legally meaningful," said Campbell, who left the Twin Cities several years ago and now lives in Houston. "It's too bad others aren't there for them."

But most involved in gay issues seem to see this case as a loser that might serve only to fan the flames of bigotry.

"The fundamental proposition seems to be that they have a valid marriage license," said Phil Durand, an attorney for Out-Front Minnesota, a gay activist organization. "I don't know that there's anyone who would agree that they do."

In fact, shortly after their September 1971 wedding, an assistant county attorney in Blue Earth County said the license issued was invalid "because the bride was not a woman." (Hennepin County, where the two resided, always had refused to issue a marriage license.)

Making that wedding more uncomfortable for many gays, then and now, is that weeks before their wedding, McConnell adopted Baker, who took the name Pat McConnell. (It's thought that Blue Earth County issued a marriage license on the assumption that Pat was a woman. Baker and McConnell always have said the adoption simply was about giving their relationship "legal status.")

Less than a month after the headline-making wedding, the state Supreme Court said that Minnesota law prohibited same-sex marriage. The court rejected the Baker-McConnell claim that because the Minnesota Constitution didn't reject same-sex marriage, it must accept it.

"As old as the book of Genesis," wrote one justice of a heterosexual understanding of marriage.

Baker and McConnell never have accepted that ruling. Campbell, who also ended up isolated from many in the gay community for being too confrontational, believes the two have a chance to win on the issue.

"The Supreme Court already has bit the bullet on the tough one," Campbell said. "It's against the law to discriminate based on the sexual behavior of people. If the court has accepted gay sex, it shouldn't have difficulty with long-term gay relationships."

No matter the outcome, this suit marks a new coming out for Baker and McConnell. Campbell indicated that the timing has little to do with the rest of the national gay-marriage debate.

After going head-to-head with so many cultural values decades ago, Baker and McConnell decided to step back and wait, Campbell said.

"Battle fatigue," said Campbell, citing one of the reasons Baker and McConnell seemed to fade.

There were many battles.

In addition to their efforts to marry, Baker became the first openly gay student body president at the University of Minnesota. (One of his campaign posters is remembered by some as hilariously cutting-edge: "Put yourself in Jack Baker's shoes," the poster read. He was pictured in high heels.) Baker would go on to successfully challenge efforts to block him from taking the Minnesota bar exam because of questions about his "moral character." McConnell had to go to court to win a position as a University of Minnesota librarian.

Then came the slow fade from public view.

Baker has popped into headlines on occasion. As recently as 2002 he ran for the state Supreme Court. "My vision: Equal justice for all God's children. No exceptions, no excuses," he wrote in a short campaign essay in the Star Tribune. He was trounced by incumbent Paul Anderson.

McConnell, who ended up in the Hennepin County library system, has been a key player in the design of the much-praised new Brookdale library.

But all along, Campbell said, there was a plan to wage more battles.

"The idea was to wait for a generation that we helped educate and enlighten," Campbell said. "When that generation moved into positions of power, it would be time to act again."

The generational change has come, Campbell said. So Baker and McConnell are back in the fray.

At least some Twin Cities activists believe they should have waited for another 10 years.

Doug Grow is at dgrow@startribune.com

© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.


RESPONSE: Some of Doug Grow's remarks were tacky
By Tim Campbell
May 21, 2004

Doug Grow's May 20 column about McConnell vs USA was curious and perhaps unprofessional. On the good side, Grow did report the news event. The people who usually report on federal court matters for the Star Tribune did not.

Jack Baker, McConnell's legal counsel, referred to Grow's apologetic phone call after the column appeared in all its glory using the metaphor of a sticky "tar baby." Here are a few on my own thoughts on the column. Let me start with the smallest and work up.

First, Grow starts three paragraphs with the word "But..." Not professional!
Second, Grow complicates the story unfairly by bringing up the adoption issue as perhaps discrediting. Back in the '70s, the only thing gay couples could do to protect their parteners was adoption. Unprofessional spin, Doug.

Second, Grow quotes anonymous sources at least attacking Baker and McConnell. Look: <> That echoes something I often heard Allan Spear call Jack and Mike back in the 1970s: "The lunatic fringe." My guess is the quote comes from Spear and he's still at it. What an old dinosaur.

Then, Grow closes his column with this anonymous reference as his bottom line: "At least some Twin Cities activists believe they (Baker and McConnell) shoud have waited for another ten years." Who in heaven does Grow mean? Other old Dinosaurs?
Professionally, Grow should have named these people or foregone the citations.

The most important issue, however, is this: Grow takes a few swipes at Baker and McConnell for not wanting to talk to the press about the lawsuit. The IRS and the Bush administration aren't talking about it either.

Grow apparently never even attempted to talk to the appropriate people on the the other end of the lawsuit. The Internal Revenue Service and the Bush administration. Grow is guilty of applying a major double standard in his column.

To me, the IRS contention that "The federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages." under the Bush administration seems to me blatantly unconstitutional. Particularly now that Massachusetts has legalized gay marriage.

The last time Baker and McConnell got to the Supreme Court, the Warren Burger bunch declared their complaint lacked a "substantial federal question."

I think everyone today can see the gay marriage question is both substantial and federal.

I am very curious to know how a president who bills himself as a "compassionate conservative" can justify denying McConnell and Baker joint income-tax return benefits. My God, they've been together thirty-eight years now. It clearly dignifies what we call marriage.

My bottom line is this. The Bush administration's stance is clearly conservative. I refuse to call it compassionate.

Tim Campbell
timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com
Baker-McConnell web site: www.may-18-1970.org
Fan Club email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com


May 19, 2004 Pioneer Press
IRS suit tackles gay marriage
BY DAVID HAWLEY

Thirty-four years after they first applied for a marriage license, Jack Baker and L. Michael McConnell are suing the IRS because they weren't allowed to file a joint tax return.
Baker, a Minneapolis corporate attorney and a local pioneer in gay activism, is representing McConnell, his partner, in the lawsuit that was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
Not surprisingly, the lawsuit is about more than a tax refund. It also asks the federal court for an order "declaring plaintiff to be a full citizen who is lawfully married and, by that fact, entitled to be treated the same as every other married Minnesotan, similarly situated."
Baker and McConnell claim a unique situation as a gay married couple. In 1971, they obtained a marriage license in Mankato, Minn., and subsequently were married before a Methodist minister in the Twin Cities.
At the time, "no state or federal statute, no opinion of the Minnesota Attorney General, and no decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court specifically disenfranchised marriages between two persons of the same sex," the lawsuit claims.
The suit, however, arises from a tax return McConnell filed in 2000 and tried to amend in 2003. In 2000, he had filed as an unmarried individual and three years later filed an amended return that changed his status to married — thus claiming a refund of $793.28.
The IRS didn't respond to the request until March, when McConnell received a letter saying his claim was rejected because "the Federal Government does not recognize same-sex marriages."
"They are claiming that the government is violating due process," said attorney Larry Leventhal, who is assisting Baker in the suit. "More recent laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, cannot be applied retroactively."
Baker said he and McConnell would not comment about the lawsuit.
Baker was the first openly gay president of the University of Minnesota's student association in the 1970s and attended law school there. With the help of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, he successfully challenged an attempt by the State Board of Examiners to prevent him from taking the bar exam because of questions about his moral character.
In 1970, he also initiated what is believed to have been the first attempt in the United States to seek a legal marriage for gays when he sued Hennepin County after the county refused to issue a license to allow him to marry McConnell. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal of that case — but by then, McConnell and Baker had obtained a license in Mankato.
Ann Marie DeGroot, executive director of OutFront Minnesota, a leading gay activist organization, said she is troubled by the latest lawsuit.
"I've always maintained that legal change follows social change," DeGroot said, adding she believes that Minnesota is not ready to legalize same-sex marriage and that the Baker-McConnell lawsuit will only inflame passions.
"I think the timing (of the lawsuit) is bad," she said.
Phil Duran, attorney for OutFront, said he has doubts about the rigor of Baker's legal argument. "I think it's safe to say that there are lots of questions about the validity of their marriage of 30 years ago," Duran said. "And it's a safe bet that the federal court will deal with that fact first."
But Tim Campbell, the former publisher of the GLC Voice newspaper in the 1980s, predicted that the case could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I'm not a lawyer, but Baker's legal argument makes a lot of sense to me," said Campbell, who now lives in Houston. "He's saying that under the law, what is not specifically prohibited is permitted. And their marriage in 1971 wasn't specifically prohibited."
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Joan Erickson of St. Paul. Baker said he is not seeking a jury trial.



MN Daily April 12, 2004 Campbell's Guest Column
April 12, 2004
Opinion
Guest Column

Moderate gays and their friends need to go forward Back in late February, Peter Jennings suggested on ABC News that separating straight marriage from gay civil unions might be a wise compromise, giving a half a loaf to each side in the controversy. A Star Tribune reporter suggested the same to me in a phone conversation last month. Nonsense. Jerry Falwell doesn’t deserve half of Sister Boom Boom’s loaf of bread. This attitude reeks of condescension.
The gay rights movement suffers today because for too long many gays and gay-friendly people have been eager to accept half a loaf. Back in the 1970s, former Minnesota Sen. Allan Spear, DFL-Minneapolis, authored a Minnesota statute deliberately excluding gay marriage. At about the same time, the almost gay Metropolitan Community Church started doing “holy unions” instead of marriages for gay couples.

More recently, we see U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., opposing the gay marriages now happening in large numbers in San Francisco. Much of the gay press and many in so-called gay-rights organizations have labeled gay marriage advocates as radicals, assuming the labels of moderate or conservative gays for themselves. This divides the community against itself on the core issue of gay rights: the right to fall in love with and marry the person you choose.

In 1962 I was drafted. I admitted to the U.S. armed services that I was gay by checking a box that asked if I had “homosexual tendencies.” Since then, nearly 40 years of fighting for gay rights has taught me this: The extreme right is never appeased by compromise. Look at their yelling in Massachusetts over civil unions in late March. The extreme right really wants gays and lesbians to not exist. Compromise with them only turns friends of gays into enemies.

The fundamentalists claim they wage war on gays because gays commit hideous sins that will bring down the fire of God on the rest of the world. This argument assumes the fundamentalists themselves have no hideous sins. Hooey. These claims are simply bogus. I visualize the extreme right, rocks in hand, seeking prostitutes to stone. It was a spectacle in biblical times. It was entertainment. That is a perversion of religion for sexual fun.

Unfortunately, when mullahs preach, bashers bash and terrorists strike. That’s the perversion of religion for political ends. Neither of these perversions deserves any deference from good people, moderate gays or gay-friendly people.

If you see yourself as a gay or gay-friendly moderate or conservative, please stop shrinking back from the extreme right. These are not reasonable and holy people. Please stop appeasing them. What the gay marriage movement needs from you today is this: Please move forward and join the pro-marriage “radicals.”

Let’s look at this issue of cutting the gay rights baby in half, the so-called Solomon-like wisdom of the gay pragmatists or moderates. Solomon is the biblical guy who proposed to cut a baby in half when two different mothers were fighting over its ownership. The false mother said, “Yes, yes, cut him in half.” The real mother shrieked, “My God, no. Don’t do that, Solomon.”

Well, the birthrights of human beings are living things like babies. If you cut them up, you get mutated “things” like apartheid, Jim Crow laws, enforced segregation, Indian reservations, relocation camps, pogroms, cross burnings, lynchings and bashings. I say no to all of that. The real parents of gay rights are like Jack Baker and Mike McConnell. We say, “Hell no! Don’t cut this baby in half.”


Tim Campbell worked with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell on gay rights in the early 1970s and published the GLC Voice in Minneapolis from 1979-92.

Email: timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
Blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com
Baker-McConnell web site: www.may-18-1970.org
Fan Club email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com



Pulse Twin Cities April 8, 2004
How gay marriage got divorced from gay rights

by Tim Campbell

The early years

Jack Baker and Mike McConnell applied for a marriage license on May 18, 1970 in Minneapolis. That is the first known gay marriage license application. The Clerk of District Court for Hennepin County summarily refused to issue them a license. Subsequently, Baker and McConnell went to Blue Earth County in southwestern Minnesota and got a license on August 16, 1971, from a different clerk. They were married on September 3 using that license. The Rev. Roger Lynn, a United Methodist minister, performed the ceremony.

That gay marriage required a little legal detour. In early August 1971, Baker changed his name to Pat Lyn McConnell. Consequently, the names on the license are Pat Lyn McConnell (aka Jack Baker) and J. Michael McConnell. They wanted the same last name in case they acquired children.

Baker was in law school at the University of Minnesota. McConnell had just been nominated as an instructor and chief cataloguer at the university library on the St. Paul Campus. In the wake of monumental news coverage over this controversy, the students at the University of Minnesota elected Baker student body president. The University Board of Regents, on the other hand, reacted by withdrawing McConnell’s nomination as a library head and university instructor.

During this media onslaught, Jack and Mike received four large boxes of mail from all over the world. I have met people who saw articles about the event in newspapers in both Paris and Athens. Most of the mail was supportive.

Moreover, Jack’s victory at the student polls was probably the first instance of a vote by the general, non-gay public, on attitudes towards gays. That vote made one thing clear: the time had come for gay rights.

The Baker-McConnell dispute also produced a wave of copycat gay marriages throughout the country. I was a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin at the time. There, I was invited to at least five gay marriages. One drag queen even asked me to marry her. Worse yet, I accepted. Fortunately, we both forgot about it when we sobered up.

Tell the whole truth. The bulk of that rash of gay weddings involved drag queens with butch-looking lovers. They were, however, performed by ministers. Most of them did not last longer than a good underarm deodorant. None of them, to my knowledge, involved real marriage licenses.

Gay marriage was not exactly a brand new idea, even back in 1970. Jean Genet described one in a novel in 1943 and John Rechy did so in 1963.There were big differences, however. The Baker-McConnell wedding involved same-sex appearance. It was intended to produce social stability like a straight marriage. By contrast, the Genet and Rechy gay weddings were staged to look like opposite-sex marriages and designed to scoff at society. They were not intended to produce social stability.

Baker and McConnell are still together to this day. In fact, they have been together a total of 38 years now, 34 of those married. Sure beats Britney Spears’ marriage record! Also beats the records of Zaza Gabor and Liz Taylor.

Decades of lawsuits

Baker and McConnell ended up in decades of legal haggling because of their marriage. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the clerk who denied them a license. Its decision cited the Book of Genesis. Jack and Mike appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, Warren Burger and cohorts dismissed their appeal for lack of a “substantial federal question.” How would they rule today? Who knows. President George W. Bush certainly wants to turn gay marriage into a substantial federal issue now.

Baker, now a lawyer, argues their marriage was and remains valid since there were no laws or court decisions prohibiting same sex marriages on September 3, 1971. He notes: “Every court recognizes this basic principle: that which is not prohibited is permitted.” The Minnesota marriage statute actually has a section listing non-valid marriages. Same-sex marriage is not on that list. Baker argues their marriage is in fact more solid legally than the recent ones in San Francisco. Those marriages were performed after laws against same-sex marriages were passed.

Jack and Mike Had a Dream
Legal considerations aside, Jack and Mike’s genius was to perceive long before most, that the right to marry is an essential part of gay civil rights. Their point is: the fundamental right for gays and lesbians is the right to fall in love with and marry the person of one’s choice. Without that right, there is no such thing as gay rights. “It’s nonsense,” said Jack long ago, “to find two people (both competent to marry) incompetent because they chose each other.”

Many gay marriage activists say the right to choose your own spouse is probably the most characteristic social right of modern western democracies. Such a right was unheard of in ancient China. It’s a right rarely granted in the “oily-garchies” of the Middle East. Many contemporary Jews are still loath to marry outside their religion. Back in the `50s, Catholic parents hoped that none of their kids would marry outside their Church. Unthinkable was marrying outside one’s own race. But times changed. Times change because young people dare to love outside the box. They always have. They probably always will.

Early Legislation

While the news of the fight over gay marriage and McConnell’s job denial were fresh in the minds of the public and elected officials, Baker went to the Minneapolis City Council looking to include gays and lesbians in the city’s civil rights ordinance. Council Member Ed Felien, now editor of Pulse of the Twin Cities, took on the task and authored such a bill. It was passed unanimously in 1974 amid virtual silence on the council. Felien said recently, “They (the city council members) were afraid to say anything against it.” This put Minneapolis on the map as the leader in gay civil rights legislation.

Enter the Democrats

Minneapolis and Saint Paul also beat the rest of the country to the idea of separating the right to marry from the rest of gay civil rights. This was in direct response to Baker and McConnell’s marriage.

The anti-marriage contingent included, among others, Alan Spear, a gay history professor who represented the University of Minnesota neighborhood as a State Senator. Spear tiptoed out of the closet to a small circle of friends once Baker got elected student body president. He proposed to author a gay rights bill on the state level. Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr. agreed to help. Spear and Coleman were both career Democrats.

Coleman’s motive was that he was married to Debbie Howell who had a gay brother. I suspect Howell’s brother came out to them after Jack got elected student body president. That made me and hundreds of others come out. Howell herself was a wig at Minnesota’s main daily newspapers. In 1975, she wrote Alan Spear’s going public interview for the Minneapolis Star newspaper. Minnesota being a small pond, this trio constituted a power block.

Sex, Drugs and Secret Parties (I mean fundraisers)

Spear and Coleman hired a part time lobbyist named Steve Endean to shepherd these gay rights bill through the state senate. There were a number of hearings and amendments before all the ordinances finally settled in. Endean was a piece of work. He was in his early 20’s, a college dropout, and stood only about 5 feet, 6 or 7 inches tall in a chubby frame. Everybody called him “Weebee.”

By day Endean lobbied at city halls and on Capitol Hill. By night he checked coats at popular gay discos—first at Sutton’s which has since folded, then at the Gay `90s which is still the biggest gay bar between Chicago and San Francisco. After bars closed, “Weebee” almost literally lived in the local gay bathhouses.

With all this gay contact, Endean got to know both the important closet gays and the hottest young gay guys. He was great at organizing private parties, hand picking guests from both groups. Some of the more outrageous called it “pimping.” Those parties rivaled the ones in Larry Kramer’s novel, “Faggots: Drugs, sex and rock and roll.” This was how gay money began to flow into the hands of Democrats back then.

Drag queens and the Baker-McConnell crowd were not invited to these secret, late-hour fundraiser parties. Baker and McConnell didn’t notice or mind being left out of the parties, but the drag queens did. Eventually, they went to the State Legislature en masse, in drag, to demand inclusion in the gay rights bill. What’s more, the drag queens won.

Gay marriage, on the other hand, was never included in Minnesota’s gay rights legislation. Sadly, the Spear-Coleman-Howell laws were carefully crafted to exclude the “crazies.” That meant the drag queens and radicals like Baker and McConnell who wanted gay marriage. The laws also left the University of Minnesota exempt from all these pieces of legislation.

Enter Half-Measures

The civil rights laws in Minnesota, scripted in the 1960s, had four parts: employment, housing, public services and public accommodations. The Spear-Coleman-Howell laws added gays and lesbians to those sections of said laws that dealt with employment and housing only. They did not add them to the sections of the same laws that dealt with public services and public accommodations.

Previously, public services and public accommodations referred to places like hotels, restaurants and barbershops. Nobody could decide exactly where marriage licensing fell. Was it a public service? Was it a public accommodation? They didn’t know.

Nonetheless, they were sure they weren’t going to push gay marriage and drag queens on anybody. Whenever the proposed legislation had a setback, Spear and Endean would cuss the “crazies,” that is, Baker-McConnell and the drag queens. They hardly worried about the wild parties. Note, however, that everybody agreed, even back then, that full gay rights would include gay marriage.

The Spear-Coleman-Howell triumvirate got gay rights laws introduced at the state capitol pretty soon after the Minneapolis and St. Paul ordinances were passed. Still, it just sat there. It never got out of committee and never came up for a vote in the whole house and senate. A public discussion of gay rights was not happening. Spear excused himself saying: “I don’t want to get some legislators in the habit of voting against gay rights.” Unfortunately, no one had to fight very hard for the bill either. The State of Minnesota did not pass a gay rights law until much later: 1993. Rural Minnesota dragged its feet.

Half-measures exported to Washington, D.C.

In about 1976, Spear and friends let the Minnesota legislation lie fallow and sent Endean off to Washington, D.C., to work with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He eventually founded the Human Rights Campaign. He figured even closeted gays would write checks to a group so broadly named. “Weebee” eventually died from AIDS but the groups he influenced have been resisting gay marriage ever since the `70s. They consider their compromise wise like Solomon. Democrats around the country have adopted the same “pragmatic” approach.

For example, Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts who sits in the U.S. House of Representatives, is currently notorious for his criticism of the gay marriages now occurring in San Francisco. Ironically, his constituents keep electing him even though he rented an apartment downstairs of his own dwelling to a well-known gay prostitute. Naturally, Frank claims he didn’t know. Clinton’s not the only dumb Democrat.

Supporters of gay marriage, on the other hand, consider this opposition a fungus growing under the nails of Democrats. While this may make easier work for politicians, gay marriage supporters insist it’s not very practical for their goals.

Alan Spear has now retired from the Minnesota Senate and lives with his longtime partner, Jun, a Japanese immigrant, in central Minneapolis. He reports that he and Jun have not yet gone anywhere to get a license or a civil union. “We’ve thought about it, but done nothing. Just laziness, I guess,” he said recently. Then, he added, “We don’t really need it.” At least Spear has been consistent!

Epilogue

The half-measure maneuvers of these Democrats did not reap many benefits for gays and lesbians in Minnesota. In the intervening years, practically no gays and lesbians have filed complaints with any civil rights departments anywhere. Someone in a position analogous to Mike McConnell, can’t even file a complaint under the ordinance because the University of Minnesota is exempt.

The bottom line is: More gays and lesbians have applied for marriage licenses this year in San Francisco in one week than have filed discrimination complaints throughout the country since 1975. That suggests lots of gays think the right to marry is a very important right. One might call it a “substantial federal issue.”

[E-mail timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com.]
[Baker-McConnell web site: www.may-18-1970.org]
[Fan club email firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com]
--------------------------------------------------


This announcement was printed from Pulse of the Twin Cities
http://pulsetc.com

The URL for this announcement is:
http://pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1015



Standard-Times Feb 15, 2004 by Jack Spillane
Gay rights explode on social scene

By JACK SPILLANE Standard-Times staff writer
February 15, 2004

The first American gay couple to win notoriety for trying to get a marriage license were an Air Force veteran and a librarian from Minneapolis in 1971.
Jack Baker was a law student at the University of Minnesota when he tried to obtain a license to marry Michael McConnell.
He was denied the license and took the matter to the courts, where he lost repeatedly.
He and Mr. McConnell also lost their jobs in the face of mounting publicity as their case wound its way to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Mr. Baker and Mr. McConnell did win a photo spread in Look Magazine for their efforts, but they never attracted much support even with the gay community.
In fact, attempts by gay men and women to marry in the 1970s and '80s were routinely marginalized by the early gay rights movement.
The initial movement was more focused on access to independence and vocational opportunities for lesbians and sexual freedom for gay men, according to gay rights historians.
"There were feminist-lesbians who criticized marriage for being patriarchal and oppressive and there were gay male sexual liberationists who rejected the patterns of monogamy that marriage historically entailed," said Dale Carpenter, a professor specializing in sexual orientation law at the University of Minnesota.
In addition to the ambivalence of some in the gay community about marriage, even gay activists who endorsed the concept in the 1970s and '80s saw it as a longer-term goal, he said.
"It was seen as something way off in the future because of the basic issues of (gays) being criminals and employment discrimination and hate crimes," Mr. Carpenter said. "It was seen as a loser, a guaranteed loser."
But that was then and this is now.
A third of a century later, the movement for gay marriage rights has arrived not only in Massachusetts, but across the country and in much of the Western world.
Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands have legalized same-sex marriage. Last week, as the Massachusetts Legislature debated the issue, San Francisco authorities performed at least 15 same-sex weddings last week and issued about a dozen more marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples in an open challenge to California law.
The issue has become the preeminent social debate of the day.
"There is a large amount of agreement now that as an ultimate goal, the option of gay marriage ought be on the gay rights agenda," Mr. Carpenter said.
Two developments over the last two decades are said to have changed the attitude of the gay community toward marriage: the rapid growth in the number of lesbians raising children and the effect of AIDS in the community of gay men.
As they raised children, lesbians realized they needed greater financial protections connected to child care responsibilities and benefits afforded other parents.
After the onset of AIDS, gay men wanted greater proxy rights for health care and inheritance issues connected to their sick partners.
"I think that the culture has been moving steadily toward greater acceptance of gay people, more equality in the law for gay people and more recognition in the law of the general needs of gay people and their children," Mr. Carpenter said.
A catalyst for the movement toward marriage rights among gays, according to many, was Andrew Sullivan, a gay man and national conservative analyst.
Mr. Sullivan, an editor of The New Republic, one of the most influential political magazines in the country, put the issue on the national agenda in a 1989 groundbreaking article titled "Here comes the groom: a conservative case for gay marriage."
In the article, he argued that civil gay marriage was needed in order to avoid the bureaucratic mess of increasingly popular domestic partnership contracts.
Unlike domestic partnership laws, gay marriage doesn't open up avenues for heterosexuals to get benefits without the responsibilities of marriage, such as two men living together as roommates or a brother and sister, he wrote.
Mr. Sullivan contended that legalizing same-sex marriage would prevent nightmares of litigation from domestic partnership laws.
He also endorsed the concept on the grounds of societal stability.
The same culture that criticizes gays for being promiscuous cannot rationally argue for excluding them from the institution that encourages monogamy, he said.
"Gay marriage is not a radical step," he wrote. "It avoids the mess of domestic partnership. It is human. It is conservative in the best sense of the word. It's about relationships. Given that gay relationship will always exist, what possible social goal is advanced by framing the law to encourage those relationships to be unfaithful, undeveloped and insecure?" he asked.
Mr. Sullivan's point of view may have gained acceptance in most sectors of the gay community, but it has been extremely controversial in society at large.
The movement toward gay marriage resulted in the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that in turn allowed some 40 individual states to ban gay marriage.
But the movement has also resulted in lawsuits that ended with courts in four states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and now Massachusetts -- ruling that gays have the right to marry or have civil unions. Some states -- most notably Vermont and California -- granted either the right for civil unions or many of the benefits associated with them.
Gay rights historians contend that even with vehement opposition, things are changing.
While it took a century for blacks to win full civil rights after the Civil War, the gay rights movement has only been around since the 1970s, Mr. Carpenter said.
"As cultural transformations go, the march to gay equality has been unusually fast," he said. "In the space of 40 years or so, we have gone from every state in the country criminalizing gay sex to many states and cities and companies recognizing domestic partners and protecting people from discrimination," he said.
Forty years ago there were no positive gay characters in television in the movies and now there are many characters, he said. During the same period, the country has gone from having no openly gay politicians to hundreds of them holding office all around the county, he said.
If gays begin to legally marry in Massachusetts in May, the public might be fully used to the idea as a non-event by the time any constitutional amendment is voted on in November 2006, he said.
"The optimistic view is that if people have two years to see that it doesn't bring about the end of the world, then it might be an example for the rest of the country," he said.
Mr. Carpenter acknowledged, however, that the other result could be that gay marriage so disturbs the rest of the country that a federal constitutional amendment will be adopted.
"That amendment would probably not be repealed in our lifetimes if it passes," he said.
Whatever happens, according to Mr. Carpenter, it is most likely that the decision in Massachusetts will affect only Massachusetts. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to wade into the contentious same-sex marriage issue until there is more consensus on it, he said.
For the time being, the federal Defense of Marriage of Act will probably result in each state deciding the issue for itself, he said.
"It's too hot an issue right now," Mr. Carpenter said. "The court tends to shy away from contentious social issues, the exception being the abortion issue."
In the meantime, Greg Johnson, a sexual orientation law professor at Vermont Law School, said that the civil union law instituted in that state was a major step forward for gays.
Although most states refused to recognize the benefits Vermont granted to same-sex united partners, some did, he said.
In addition, civil unions offered gays the option of defining their relationships in a way totally different from heterosexuals, free from many religious traditions that have condemned them, he said.
"Some say that civil unions speak directly to the lesbian and gay experience in a way that traditional marriage does not," he said.
Whatever happens in Massachusetts, the same-sex marriage movement has advanced because far more people are now familiar with the legitimate needs of gays, Mr. Johnson said.
"The whole debate in Massachusetts has greatly, greatly advanced the national movement," he said. "I think we'll see more same-sex cases because of it."
Mr. Carpenter, who also teaches courses on constitutional and sexual orientation law, does not believe that gay marriage will necessarily develop into the politically divisive issue that many predict.
He wrote a brief on behalf of the Republican Unity Coalition, a national organization of Republicans, both straight and gay, committed to making sexual orientation a "non-issue" within the Republican Party and in the nation.
He noted that despite President George W. Bush's hinting that he might endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the president has been careful to not say that he definitely will. That's because Republican leaders realize that many moderate voters have no appetite for an amendment that would seem like gay bashing, he said.
Mr. Carpenter predicts that the Defense of Marriage laws enacted in 38 states will hold and that the issue will largely become relegated to the individual states.
For the foreseeable future, he envisions a country in which gays may have marriage or civil unions in some states but not in others.
"Many conservatives who oppose gay marriage also oppose a constitutional amendment because they believe in federalism, the right of the states to determine for themselves their own policies on important matters like marriage and family," he said.
"A lot of conservatives believe that this is something that ought to be resolved in Massachusetts, however it's resolved," he said.

[This story appeared on Page B1 of The Standard-Times on February 15, 2004.]

Response by Tim Campbell
Standard-Times gay marriage predictions too dire

By Tim Campbell
Written June 2, 2004.
(Not published by S-T yet)

Please let me respond to some factual errors and pessimistic predictions in Jack Spillane’s February 15, 2004 article “Gay rights explode on social scene.”

For starters, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell won notoriety for applying for a marriage license on May 18, 1970, not in 1971 as Spillane states. Their 1971 marriage got very little news attention and was never dealt with by the courts--yet.

The courts will, however, surely deal with that marriage in the near future since McConnell just used that later marriage license to sue the Bush administration and the IRS over a joint income-tax return.

The lawsuit is McConnell v USA, Minnesota District Court, May 18, 2004. McConnell filed the lawsuit on the thirty-fourth anniversary of his first application for a license to marry.

Next, Spillane alleges Baker and McConnell both lost their jobs over the gay marriage issue. Not so. Baker was elected student body president at the University and beat off an attempt by some Minnesota authorities to deny him a law license. Only McConnell lost his job. He had been nominated to a position with the University of Minnesota library system.

Third, Spillane repeatedly refers to “gay historians” without naming his list of such experts. I concluded that Dale Carpenter, a gay Republican faculty member at the University, was nearly Spillane’s only authority on gay history. One wonders how Spillane and Carpenter connected for this reporting.

Spillane’s sentence that really ticks me off is this: “Even gay activists who endorsed the concept in 1970s and `80s saw it as a longer-term goal….It was seen as a loser, a guaranteed loser.” Spillane is quoting Carpenter.

Who in hades do Spillane and Carpenter mean by “gay activists.” I lived through those years as an instructor at the University of Minnesota and Jack Baker and Mike McConnell were known as the “gay activists.”

The people who called gay marriage a “loser” were low-level local Democratic politicians seeking office and trying to coopt the gay rights movement by promising they would take care of gays eventually. They hated the name “activists.”

The primary culprit was University history professor Allan Spear. Spear also liked to call Baker and McConnell “the lunatic fringe.” Ironically, Spear won his first election to the Minnesota Senate only because Jack Baker endorsed him.
Am I right in guessing Spillane and Carpenter are now canonizing Spear as a gay historian and a “gay activist”? That’s really queer. Spear was dragging his feet back then. Today, his tail is in Jurassic Park.

Finally about Cartenper and Spillane’s negative predictions that the courts are going to leave gay marriage up to the states.

Two things are self-evident: First, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act has already federalized the gay marriage issue. It'’ too late for the courts to leave it to the states.

Second, the current U.S. Supreme Court already bit the bullet on the hardest gay rights issue: the sodomy laws. More over, sodomy is now referred to as a “Lewinski.” Nobody bats an eye over sodomy anymore.

Let me predict that longterm gay relationships like Baker and McConnell’s, are simple not going to freak out this Supreme Court. They may even be impressed with their 38 years together, as most are. They dignify the very idea of marriage.

And super finally, I do not buy Carpenter’s analysis of gay history. Yes AIDS may have helped gay marriage gain popularity. Yes, a lesbian baby boom may have helped lesbian marriage gain popularity. Still, Carpenter misses the biggest cause: gay marriage is popular now because closetry is dead. Contemporary gays and lesbians instinctively seek recognition of their relationships, just like all other lovers. Halleluja!

I hope the Standard-Times will continue to cover the gay marriage issue. Maybe you will even recognize that your predictions are too dire.

Tim Campbell, Coordinator
FirstGayCoupleFanClub@yahoo.com
timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com

[Tim Campbell taught French at the University of Minnesota from 1970-1972. He also published the GLC Voice newspaper in Minneapolis from 1979-1992.]

[Baker-McConnell website is www.may-18-1970.org]
[Fan club email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com]
[Campbell blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com]




Minnesota Daily January 29, 2004
Gay rights at issue as couple files joint taxes

In 1970, two then-University students were the first to seek gay marriage.

By Josh Verges

Thirty-four years ago, the union of two University graduate students sparked the debate over gay marriage rights. Now, the same couple might bring itself back into the limelight as the two men file a joint federal tax return.
In 1970, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell became the first gay couple to seek legal marriage. When the state denied their license, the couple took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to review it, saying a homosexual’s right to marriage was not a substantial federal question.
“It was the first case of two normal-looking guys presenting themselves as gays,” said Tim Campbell, a friend of the couple and fellow activist.
Baker and McConnell no longer do interviews and refused to comment for this story. The couple lives in Minneapolis, where Baker is a lawyer and McConnell is a librarian.
Campbell said the couple is filing a joint tax return this year, an issue that will likely be resolved only by the Supreme Court.
“Their position would be that they were legally married back in the ’70s,” Campbell said.
Campbell met Baker and McConnell in 1971 at a gay issues discussion shortly after University students made Baker the first openly gay student body president at a major university.
As a doctoral student at the University’s Morris campus, Campbell taught French and teaching methods in the early 1970s but was let go because of his heavy drinking.
Motivated by the couple’s courage and activism, Campbell quit drinking in 1973 and began advocating gay rights, outing himself in the process.
After leading sensitivity training sessions alongside the couple and taking over their annual Minneapolis gay rights parade, Campbell began and ran the first successful gay newspaper in the Twin Cities, the GLC Voice, for 14 years.
“I went through my life not realizing that gay was an option,” he said. “I will be eternally grateful to Jack Baker and the like for showing me the way out of darkness.”
Although Baker would not comment on the possibility of filing a joint tax return, he did not deny Campbell’s claim.
University law professor Dale Carpenter said he is pessimistic about the couple’s chances in court.
“My guess is that ultimately, the state will not find marriage laws unconstitutional,” Carpenter said.
However, Baker and McConnell have always had realistic expectations for the fight for equality.
At the time of their union, McConnell predicted it would take 30 years for same-sex couples to win equal marriage rights.
By order of the Vermont Supreme Court, on April 26, 2000, then-Gov. Howard Dean signed into law the right to same-sex civil unions.
Such unions provide same-sex couples the same financial benefits as married couples, as well as the right to make medical decisions traditionally reserved for spouses.
In November, the Massachusetts Supreme Court announced same-sex civil marriages should be protected under that state’s constitution.
Now, political pundits say gay marriage will be a significant cultural issue for upcoming presidential debates.
Kathy Hull, a University sociology professor, said the issue could decide a close election “if the Republicans decide to bring a lot of attention to the issue.”
Jonathan Kahn, a University political science professor, said he does not think either party will focus on cultural issues such as gay marriage. However, he said it could have a small impact in some states.
Last week, President George W. Bush promised in his State of the Union address to “defend the sanctity of marriage.”
“Bush is walking a really fine line,” Hull said. “He wants to maintain his image as a compassionate conservative, but at the same time he wants to get the Christian conservatives to the polls.”
“Politicians are always looking for the easiest ways to do things,” Campbell said. “Visionaries are looking for the most difficult ways to do things.”

© Copyright 2004 The Minnesota Daily


WashPost Dec 30, 2003 by Von Drehle
Advance in Fight For Gay Marriage

Fringe to center, movement gains ground

By David Von Drehle
December 30, 2003, Washington Post via Newsday

Such a nice-looking couple, an Air Force veteran and a librarian, both in their late 20s. After more than three years of steady romance, they decided to get hitched. So they went to the county clerk's office in Minneapolis. It was May 18, 1970.

Jack Baker and Michael McConnell were denied the license because neither was a woman. Baker, a law student on the GI Bill, took the matter to court. He lost, appealed and lost again. McConnell lost his job because of the publicity; Baker was elected student body president at the University of Minnesota. Mostly, the incident was treated as a curiosity. Look magazine profiled the couple: "Neither is a limp-wristed sissy," the writer assured readers. Leading gay rights activists dismissed the pair.

But what started that day in 1970 has moved, in a single generation, from the fringe to the center of the American consciousness. Last month a divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announced a right to same-sex civil marriage under that state's constitution. It was a step further than any other court had gone, but only a step - courts in other states had been moving along the same path for a decade.

Vermont recognizes a marriage equivalent called "civil unions" for same-sex couples. Courts in Hawaii and Alaska were headed toward same-sex unions until voters cut them off with state constitutional amendments. Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court believes that the nation's highest tribunal is going the same way and that laws defining marriage to exclude same-sex couples stand on very shaky legal ground.

The advance of this idea is more remarkable because it was largely unplanned and unsanctioned. For years leading gay rights organizations gave the effort little or no support, and even today many gay men and lesbians have grave misgivings about the push for marriage rights. Some fear a backlash that could strengthen their opponents; others question whether it is worth the struggle. Neither political party has lifted a finger to further the cause.

But for many reasons, some obvious, some arcane, the idea has gained unforeseen momentum in U.S. courtrooms. No supreme court, state or federal, has ruled against it in more than 10 years, and now opponents of same-sex marriage feel they must try the most arduous political route of all - an amendment to the U.S. Constitution - to stop it.

Critics of same-sex marriage have long portrayed it as part of a "gay agenda," pursued through a "stealth strategy of using the courts to force gay marriage on a country that rejects the idea," as traditional values activist Gary Bauer put it in an interview.

That is not how the leaders of the fledgling gay movement of Minneapolis saw things when Jack Baker filed his lawsuit, however, at the dawn of gay politics. The galvanizing Stonewall riot in New York, in which patrons of a gay bar violently resisted a police raid, had happened a year earlier, in 1969. To the extent that gays had any clear political program, it was to win the freedom to be themselves without fear of violence, arrest or job loss.

Allan Spear, a history professor at the University of Minnesota who would soon become one of the first openly gay legislators in the United States, warned that Baker and McConnell could "sabotage" gay rights by outraging the public. "Only the lunatic fringe" had any interest in marriage, Spear said.

According to Minneapolis writer and gay activist Tim Campbell, Spear's view was shared by Steve Endean, another community leader who founded the largest gay advocacy group in the country, the Human Rights Campaign.

For more than 25 years the marriage issue remained a low priority - even a source of aggravation - for much of the established gay leadership. Writer Andrew Sullivan, an influential proponent of the right to marry, recalls seeing Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, at congressional hearings on the subject in 1996.

"She was mortified," Sullivan said in a recent interview. "She called the hearings 'Hell Week.' I said, 'No, it isn't. This is our chance to put this in the middle of the public debate.'"

At the time Birch was reaching a turning point in her own thinking, she recalled recently. "We were afraid that pushing too hard on this issue would inspire extreme legislation," she said. "But by 1996 it was clear that we had achieved nothing at the federal level - not even a simple employment nondiscrimination law or hate-crimes bill. ... So why not be clear about what we need and what we should be given as a matter of birthright and a matter of being fully participating citizens?"

What had happened to move the marriage issue from Spear's "lunatic fringe" to congressional hearings? "Lawsuits," Sullivan said. But even before that, two important facts of gay life reshaped the political priorities of many gay Americans.

AIDS was one. The killer disease had a catalytic effect on the movement, as hundreds of thousands of people came to see gay rights not just as a question of personal freedom or self-_expression, but in terms of life and death. Even young homosexuals were forced to confront grim practicalities of illness - health insurance, hospital visitation, disability benefits, funeral planning and settling estates. Matters that were fairly streamlined for married couples proved difficult, if not impossible, for same-sex couples, who found themselves barred from their partners' hospital rooms, unable to make medical decisions, forbidden to cover loved ones on their employee insurance plans.

"HIV deepened our sense of how truly we are second-class citizens," said Evan Wolfson, a leading gay rights attorney and founder of Freedom to Marry. "And many nongay Americans began to see gay people not just as individuals, but as people in relationships who love and care for one another and have needs and hurt."

At the same time, in other hospital rooms, thousands of lesbians were giving birth. It was a seismic moment in the history of mating, when limitations on fertility and conception were being smashed by science and microtechnology. The idea that procreation was the province of one man mating with one woman was refuted by squalling newborns in nurseries from coast to coast. "Death and birth," Sullivan mused. "Suddenly, you couldn't get into the intensive care room where your partner of 20 years was dying. There's nothing like that experience to make you realize how vulnerable you are. And then the baby boom, especially among lesbians, made them realize they didn't have any legal protections for their families."

Evan Wolfson is a key proponent of "marriage equality," as he calls it. He read an enormously influential and controversial 1981 book by the Yale historian John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality," which argued that Christian condemnation of homosexuality was a creation of the medieval church. "That book changed my life," Wolfson said, because it convinced him that discrimination against gay people was "not part of the natural order." It could change.

At Harvard Law School, Wolfson's study of marriage law showed what he saw as a clear case of American society legally limiting the lives of gay people. Earlier generations had used marriage laws to restrict other groups - at various times whites could not marry blacks, married women could not enter contracts or own property, couples could not get divorced and so on. Those laws had changed. And so, he figured, could the restriction on same-sex couples.

Initially he ran into resistance from gay leaders. After becoming a full-time attorney at Lambda Legal, the principal gay-rights law firm in the United States, Wolfson urged it to take on a marriage rights lawsuit in Hawaii. He was turned down. So he offered behind-the-scenes help to a Hawaii attorney named Dan Foley - and Foley won. In 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court concluded that state marriage laws discriminated against same-sex couples. But Hawaii voters passed a constitutional amendment to undo the ruling before gay groups could gear up to change their minds.

The arguments made in the Hawaii case were not much different from the arguments offered by Jack Baker two decades earlier - or from the arguments made this year in Massachusetts. All drew on two strands of U.S. Supreme Court doctrine.

First, the court defined a fundamental right of Americans to form families by marriage. In 1967 that right to marry was extended to interracial couples. "Under our Constitution," the court declared, "the freedom to marry, or not marry ... resides with the individual."

The second strand defined a "right to privacy" in matters of sex. In 1965 the court struck down a Connecticut law banning contraceptive devices for married couples. As that principle was extended to cover unmarried couples, and then to allow abortion, it pushed the government out of American bedrooms and erased the legal connection between sexuality and procreation. If a person's sex life is her own business, and if marriage is a fundamental human right, then why not same-sex marriage? First in Hawaii, then in Alaska and Vermont, courts found that argument persuasive.

Since the Hawaii court ruled 10 years ago, the federal government and 37 states have passed "defense of marriage" laws aimed at ensuring that same-sex unions in one state need not be recognized beyond that state. But even conservative constitutional law scholars, led by Scalia, believe that a third, very recent pair of Supreme Court rulings places those laws in jeopardy.

The first, in 1996, struck down a state constitutional referendum in Colorado that would have prevented local governments from passing laws to protect gays against discrimination. The court condemned that "broad and undifferentiated" targeting of "a single named group." And earlier this year the justices overturned a 1986 decision that allowed states to criminalize homosexual acts, declaring that traditional values and mores are no justification for infringing the privacy of same-sex couples.

In Massachusetts last month, on a 4-3 vote, the state's high court repeatedly cited those converging lines of constitutional law - the right to marriage, the right to privacy and the liberty of gays - to support its decision to redefine marriage. Furthermore the idea that marriage is designed to support procreation by men and women is no longer credible, given the number of heterosexual couples without children and of gay couples with them.

Greg Coleman, a former clerk for conservative Justice Clarence Thomas who now specializes in Supreme Court litigation, recently predicted to a Senate subcommittee that the legal trends that influenced the Massachusetts court make it "likely" that "prohibitions on same-sex marriage ... will be held to be unconstitutional [nationwide] in the relatively near future."

Gary Bauer, a conservative and former domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, believes a tide of public opinion will block further movement toward same-sex marriage. "There was a little development in one part of the country, then another somewhere else." After Massachusetts "it's at a point where it is pretty easy to explain what's going on." Evan Wolfson, his polar opposite on this issue, said something similar. "This is not about a chess game and some secret strategy," he said. "This is about real people who want to take on the responsibility of family and marriage. Americans will see that this doesn't hurt anybody. They will be ready to accept it." Ready or not, the battle is joined.

Oasis Mag October 1996 First Gay Marriage
The History of Gay Marriage

Commentary by Tim Campbell

October is Gay and Lesbian History Month, an appellation accepted by groups as prestigious as the National Education Association. What better time to set the record right on the history of the contemporary drive for gay marriage?

Most of the news reports about gay and lesbian marriage in the media this year leave the impression that the very idea of same-sex marriage began in Hawaii in 1990. That is not true.

The idea of demanding legal gay marriage rights actually originated in Minnesota on May 18, 1970 when Jack Baker and Mike McConnell walked up to a Hennepin County counter in downtown Minneapolis and applied for a license to marry.

I use the Baker-McConnell marriage as the starting line for the contemporary drive for gay marriage because it got international news coverage, the couple received ten full boxes of supportive mail from gays and lesbians around the world, and because same sex couples have been getting married on a regular basis ever since -- without awaiting for approval from Democrats like Allan Spear, Paul Wellstone, or Bill Clinton.

Moreover, in the aftermath of this famous marriage, Jack Baker was elected Student Body President of the University of Minnesota, proving that young people of all orientations were ready for gay marriage.

The following year, Baker successfully completed a law degree and was licensed to practice in the State of Minnesota. McConnell went to work for Hennepin County's library system. Twenty-six years later, the two men are still living together contentedly in south Minneapolis.

Between 1970 and 1975, Baker and McConnell filed about eight different lawsuits related to their status as married persons, including one against the Hennepin County clerk who refused to issue them a marriage license. (The couple subsequently went to Blue Earth County and obtained a Minnesota marriage license using slightly different but legal names. ) That's definitely where the idea of litigating for gay marriage originated. The scenarios in Hawaii simply repeat what was first tried in Minnesota over twenty years ago.

In 1971, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in one of the Baker-McConnell cases that "the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman uniquely involving the procreating and rearing of children within the family is as old as the book of Genesis." Not surprisingly, opposition to gay marriage quoted that decision during recent debate over the Defense of Marriage Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. The oppositions' arguments haven't gotten any broader nor any less religious over the years.

Presently, Baker and McConnell are keeping low profiles and staying out of the battle over gay marriage. "We did what we did. The balloon is launched. We are perfectly happy to let the rest of you guys fight out the details. We have no interest in getting back into the middle of the noise," commented Jack Baker on July 14 while discussing the vote on the Defense of Marriage Act in the House of Representatives.

Now, the idea of gay marriage was not entirely new with Baker and McConnell. Jean Genet described a same-sex marriage in a boys' prison in France in his novel, "Our Lady of the Flowers," way back in the '40s ; and John Rechy described the marriage of a transvestite male and another male in his 1963 novel, "City of Night."

But prior to the Baker-McConnell marriage in 1970, most of the bar talk and pulp fiction about gay marriage envisioned marriages between one cross-dressing partner and one straight appearing partner. These marriages of "butches" and "fems" were to some extent simple parodies of heterosexual marriage. Jean Genet's same-sex marriages were meant to embrace outlaw status, not conformity.

Moreover, most middle-class, "straight-appearing, straight acting" gays and lesbians were as shocked and repulsed by same-sex marriages, or by the drag used to pull them off, as were bona fide heterosexuals.

Early supporters of gay rights like state Senator Alan Spear in Minnesota openly opposed gay marriage when Baker and McConnell were first in the news. He claimed back then that gay marriage was desired only by the "lunatic fringe."

Baker and McConnell struck out in a new direction. They were definitely middle-class, law-abiding, professional men who applied for a license through a legal institution and got married by a mainstream minister while acknowledging to all involved that both partners were of the male gender. They sent out a news release and accompanying photo of themselves both dressed in male garb cutting a wedding cake. Figurines representing two grooms in tuxedos topped the cake, literally.

The bottom line: Jack Baker and Mike McConnell started a revolution when they got married in 1970. They predicted at the time it would take 25 years to get same-sex marriages legalized. It looks like they'll be off by a year or two.

[Tim Campbell is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis. He has been chronicling the gay rights movement since 1962.]
Email: timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
Blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com
Baker-McConnell Web Site: www.may-18-1970.org
Fan Club Email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com


©1996 Oasis Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

Kaaui'i Online Dec 1996 First Gay Wedding: Baker-McConnell
Brought to you by Lambda Aloha . . .
THE FIRST GAY WEDDING WITH HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE: BAKER AND McCONNELL, MINNESOTA, 1970
Prelude to the Trial of the Century: Baehr v. Miike
Brought to you by Lambda Aloha . . .

By Tim Campbell
(c) December 1996

Most of the news reports about gay and lesbian marriage in the media this year leave the impression that the very idea of same-sex marriage began in Hawai`i in 1990. That is not true.

The idea of legal gay marriage rights actually originated in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 18, 1970 when Jack Baker and Mike McConnell walked up to a counter and asked a Hennepin County clerk to issue them a marriage license.

Baker and McConnell were attractive, down-to-earth, middle-class, law-abiding, professional men who applied for a marriage license through a legal institution and got married by a mainstream minister while acknowledging to all involved that both partners were of the male gender. They sent out a news release and accompanying photo of themselves both dressed in male garb cutting a wedding cake. Tuxedo-clad figurines representing two grooms topped the cake, literally.

I use the Baker-McConnell marriage as the starting line for the contemporary drive for gay marriage because their marriage got international news coverage, because the couple received ten boxes of supportive mail from all over the world, and because same-sex couples have been getting married on a regular basis ever since.

By contrast, the Stonewall riots back in 1969 did not receive national or international news attention. The New York Times did a couple of short articles about "Stonewall" and the Greenwich Village (NYC) based Village Voice did a more extensive article, but the Stonewall marches themselves did not get national or international news coverage. Other gays learned about Stonewall only gradually, mostly through the Advocate and through books. The Baker-McConnell wedding bells tolled around the world.

In the aftermath of this famous marriage, Jack Baker was elected Student Body President at the University of Minnesota. To many observers this proved that young people, straight and gay, were ready for gay rights and for gay marriage. Baker's campus victory also prompted coverage in campus newspapers throughtout the world. University newspaper photo editors jumped all over campy campaign photos of Baker sporting high heels in contrast to his generally Ivy-league appearance otherwise.

In 1971, Baker completed his law degree. He later set up a law practice in south Minneapolis where he continues to work to this day. His partner, Mike McConnell continues to pursue the same career with the Hennepin County Library system he had just begun when he and Jack got married. Today, twenty-six years later, the Baker and McConnell are still live together happily in south Minneapolis

Baker and McConnell are not, however, interested in re-entering the debate over gay marriage. Jack made this comment this summer just after Congress voted on the Defense of Marriage Act: "We did what we did. Our lives are in order and well on their way now. We prefer to let the rest of you guys work out all the details. The balloon has been launched."

Between 1970 and 1975, Baker and McConnell filed about eight different lawsuits related to their status as married persons. The first of their lawsuits was against the clerk who refused to issue them a marriage license (shades of this in Baehr v. Miike). Baker and McConnell subsequently went to Blue Earth County and obtained a Minnesota marriage license using slightly different but legal names. In another lawsuit, Baker, a veteran, sought veteran's benefits for his spouse. In short, Baker and McConnell raised most of the legal issues that have been presented to state or federal courts since 1970.

In 1971, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in one of the Baker-McConnell cases that "the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman uniquely involving the procreating and rearing of children within the family is as old as the book of Genesis." Not surprisingly, opposition to gay marriage quoted that decision during the recent Congressional debate over DOMA.

Naturally, the idea of gay marriage was not entirely new with Baker and McConnell. Jean Genet described a same-sex marriage in a boys' prison in France in his novel, "Our Lady of the Flowers," way back in the '40s; and John Rechy described the marriage of a transvestite male and another male in his 1963 novel, "City of Night."

But prior to the Baker-McConnell marriage in 1970, most of the bar talk and pulp fiction about gay marriage envisioned marriages between one cross-dressing partner and one straight appearing partner. These marriages of "butches" and "fems" were to some extent simple parodies of heterosexual marriage. Jean Genet's same-sex marriages were meant to embrace outlaw status, not conformity.

Moreover, most middle-class, "straight-appearing, straight acting" gays and lesbians were as shocked and repulsed by same-sex marriages, or by the drag used to pull them off, as were bona fide heterosexuals.

By applying for marriage licenses and getting married by a minister as same-sex-identified males, Baker and McConnell put marriage solidly on the agenda for gay rights. Nothing proves this better than the thousands of gay and lesbian marriages which have occurred following their example. And during the last big March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, some 30,000 same-sex couples attended one ceremony in which their marriages were blessed.

As a political sideline, let me note that 1970s supporters of gay rights within the Democratic party, notably Minnesota State Senator Alan Spear in Minneapolis, reacted negatively to the Baker-McConnell wedding. Spear claimed Baker and McConnell were going to "sabotage single-handedly" the whole drive for gay rights, and that "only the lunatic fringe" was interested in gay marriage.

On the national gay rights scene, one of Spear's proteges, Steve Endean, was very active in the founding of the national gay rights groups, the Human Rights Campaign Fund and the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force. Spear and Endean's foot-dragging on gay marriage probably set the tone for the policy on gay marriage in those groups as well in gay and lesbian caucuses in the Democratic Party nationally. Spear and Endean undoubtedly had a direct negative influence on Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone who voted for DOMA in spite of his reputation as an "ultra-liberal" and on President Bill Clinton who signed DOMA into law.

[Tim Campbell is a freelance writer.]

The following list refers to selected Hawai`i newspaper articles dealing with the Same-Sex Marriage [SSM] issue. If you have a link to include to this archive please contact us at Lambda Aloha

The First Gay Wedding with Historical Importance: Baker and McConnell
The GARDEN ISLAND (8/29/96): Hawai`i Delegates Defend Clinton on SSM
ASSOCIATED PRESS (9/9/96): Hawai`i Gay Marriage Case Opens
The HONOLULU ADVERTISER (9/9/96): Questions and Answers about Baehr v. Miike
KHNL (NBC) POLL (9/9/96): For or Against Same-Sex Marriage?

Mn Daily Sept 30, 1976
Minnesota Daily, September 30, 1976

Fight for legal gay marriages continues

By Tim Campbell
Rights Reserved September 30, 1976
Slightly updated June 24, 2004

0n May 18, 1970, University of Minnesota law student Jack Baker applied for a license to marry U of M library staff appointee Mike McConnell and began revolutionary history.

University regents arched their backs and nixed McConnell’s appointment. Students, by contrast, elected Baker student body president the following two years.

In the near future, McConnell and Baker will address the courts for at least the eighth time in an effort to vindicate their marriage rights.

For more than six years now, two hostile camps have been firing verbal muskets at each other: Christian traditionalists opposing progressive secularists.

The Christians have offered their customs since biblical times as precedent and will not relent. They have repeatedly ignored, discounted, bullied and otherwise outraged the gay couple.

The secularists, who quote worldwide anthropological history, Minnesota statutes and the U.S. Constitution, bristle at any mention of the Bible in the courts of law.

Two separate issues have also crystallized in the strife—the abstract right of gays to marry vs. the validity of the marriage of two gays who were in fact clever enough to obtain a license.

Congruent with the bicentennial theme, the progressive secularists point to ample precedents for same-gender marriage among members of North American Indian tribes including the Cheyennes, the Mohaves, the Nuers, the Tetons and many other non-Christian cultures throughout history.

Baker and McConnell insist that 1941 Minnesota marriage statutes are simple and clear, stating straightforwardly: “Marriage, so far as its validity is considered, is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential. Lawful marriage hereafter (Campbell’s emphasis) may be contracted only when a license has been obtained therefore as provided by law and when such marriage is contracted in the presence of witness and solemnized by one authorized.”

That Minnesota statue says further “Every person who has attained the full age of 18 years is capable in law of contracting marriage, if otherwise competent.”

Baker and McConnell contend that this statute was written to eliminate confusion proceeding from “common law marriages” and that other Minnesota statutes prohibit marriage essentially on only two grounds—consanguinity and previous marriage obligations.

Finally, Baker and McConnell argue that the right to marry is one of those inherent rights “retained by the people” according to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Baker and McConnell thus conclude that interference with their marriage rights is an unsolicited imposition of Christian limitations on them contrary to the First Amendment. They ask the courts to abstract the secular essence of marriage from religiously delimited custom and then to apply the law equally to all citizens as commanded by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The courts, on the other hand, refuse to accept, much less read the couple’s analysis of law and research. Instead, judges bury their noses in “common law,” sure to find no precedent for same-gender marriage to disturb them.

Stubbornly, bureaucrats and courts alike discount or ignore the 1941 legislative act eliminating “common law’ confusion. They refuse to look at non-Christian history and conveniently forget that the bulk of “common law” was first decreed by priests.

In this narrow context, the Minnesota Supreme Court asserted without blushing that “The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family is as old a the Book of Genesis.”

Judge C. Donald Peterson ventured to write this opinion despite data in Baker and McConnell’s brief which established that about one third of the marriages reviewed in the judge’s own courts involved childless couples.

Peterson’s opinion made light of Minnesota statutes and scorned the Ninth Amendment. He somehow concluded that same-gender marriages were prohibited since they were not specifically authorized.

Baker and McConnell insist that every first year law student learns that in the USA, the opposite is legally true. “What is not explicitly prohibited in law is permitted,” they argue.

An integral picture of the obstreperousness McConnell and Baker have encountered over the years would in fact involve a long history of five legal battles: 1. The fight over the initial marriage license application (no license issued). 2. The fight over their factual marriage pursuant to a license issued in Mankato, Minnesota. 3. The fight to save McConnell’s job at the University of Minnesota. 4. The fight to secure tax benefits as a married couple. 5. The fight to secure veterans benefits for Mike McConnell as Baker’s legal spouse.

These five controversies are capsulated in the following ledger of officials and their tradition guarding.

George M. Scott was the attorney who charged Hennepin County $21,968 to advise “there is no interpretation of our marriage laws…which indicate that the parties to a marriage contract are ever any other than a man and a woman.”

Thomas Bergin was the judge who refused to accept a memorandum of law stating Baker and McConnell’s position.

C. Donald Peterson was the author of the Minnesota Supreme Court 1971 opinion that cited the Book of Genesis.

Philip Neville was the judge who upheld McConnell’s right to his job at the U of M library.

Roy L. Stephenson was the federal appeals judge who overturned Neville calling same-sex marriage “a socially repugnant concept.”

Earl R. Larson was the federal appellate judge who refused to review the case on appeal from the Minnesota Supreme Court calling it “without merit.” Larson’s refusal conceals fears that recognition of Baker and McConnell’s case would open the doors to “countless legal rights” for gay and lesbian couples. (Author’s update: in 1997, the US General Accounting Office counted them: 1,049.)

Warren Burger was the U.S. Supreme Court Judge who wrote the order which refuses to review Baker and McConnell’s appeal from Judge Larson “for want of a substantial federal question.”
***

Thinking gays believe that Baker and McConnell’s statutory right to marry in Minnesota could not be clearer. Both of these citizens were of age. They were not blood-related, and they were free from previous marital bonds.

In other words, each was independently competent to marry. It is simply absurd to posit that two would-be spouses, each competent to marry, suddenly become incompetent by choosing each other.

But the latest court decision in the controversy by federal Judge Earl Larson raised the question that gives gay marriage its most measurable socioeconomic importance.

Larson alleged the case was without merit on appeal from the Minnesota Supreme Court 1971 decision. To do that, Larson ignored information in Baker and McConnell’s brief that established the very same appeals court had ruled in 1899, 1911 and 1926 that it had no power to dissolve a “prohibited marriage” once performed.

Let us note here that Baker and McConnell’s factual wedding occurred September 3, 1971. That is several weeks before the August, 1971 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling about the first application for a wedding license. That decision merely upheld the clerk who refused to issue that license.

But to compound injury with insult, Larson signaled Baker and McConnell and the interested press to lay off: “The Plaintiffs have had their ‘day in court.’ They are not entitled to …re-litigate each time they discover some new adverse effect flowing from their non-married status.”

Larson even continued to list five specific economic benefits and allude to “countless other legal rights” which would be denied Minnesota gay couples. This is precisely the point.

Progressives believe it is the sworn duty of the courts to eliminate such inequities. In the words of the Michigan court which broke centuries of precedent to grant “loss of consortium” (marital fellowship) damages to a woman for the first time. Previously, only men had received such benefits. That court wrote “Our (the court’s) oath is to do justice, not to perpetuate error.”

If the courts cannot bring all our citizens equal treatment despite past inequities, let’s program our laws into computers and get rid of judges.

The institution of marriage has been affected drastically by changing times. Practically no one perceives a need to limit sexual behavior strictly to the confines of marital contracts.

The age of marriage has risen steadily. Countless couples use contraceptives with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Author’s emphasis.)

Indeed, the courts would be pressed to explain any difference between a gay couple and a straight couple equipped with vasectomies and IUDs.

In short, it is now absurd to view “breeding” as essential to marriage. What remains is rather an ordinary civil contract between consenting adults.

Elderly, married, white male judges must begin to take these facts into account whether they like them or not.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on the other hand, was correct to a point in avoiding marital issues. Supervision of fucking has traditionally been left to the states.

But the U.S. Supreme court must also remember that in 1967 when “Mr. And Mrs. Loving “complained about the Virginia statute against inter-racial marriage, it moved in quickly. It decided that “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men…Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man.”

It seems self-evident that vital personal rights and basic civil rights of man belong to gays no less than to mixed race couples. Whether opposing traditions involve race or gender preference should make no difference.

But perhaps when Burger dismissed the gays’ appeal he meant that marriage itself is not a “substantial question.” Why then do his court’s annals deal with straight marriages?

The Baker-McConnell union is now in fact ten years stable. (Author’s update: 38 years stable.) It merits as much judicial time as any other union.

(Author’s note: several concluding paragraphs on a jump page were lost when we Xeroxed this article many years ago. Sorry. June 24, 2004)