LGBTQ marriage milestone reached
Activists celebrate decade of legal equality
HARTFORD — Jayden Rameikas was in elementary school when the Connecticut Supreme Court declared a decade ago that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Rameikas, now an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Hartford, came to a theater in Hartford on Sunday afternoon to pay tribute to the men and women of the movement that led the legal struggle.
“I'm grateful to everyone in this room,'' said Rameikas, a transgender man from Watertown.
Rameikas and other young LGBTQ people, who came of age after the legal battle over gay marriage was largely resolved in the state, expressed gratitude for the older generation.
“We're benefiting from all these protections,'' said Atticus Latini, 20. “Without them paving the way, we wouldn't have as strong of a movement.''
Latini, who also attends the University of Hartford, grew up in New Jersey but recalled hearing about the Connecticut case when he was 10.
“I didn't know I was queer back then, I hadn't really come in to my identity. But hearing about it made me feel good even if I didn't really know why."
The activists who gathered at Real Art Ways on Sunday to share a slice of carrot cake and celebrate the anniversary recalled Connecticut's pivotal role in the larger national struggle.
The state Supreme Court ruled on Kerrigan v. Department of Public Health in 2008, at a time when the marriage equality movement badly needed a victory.
The ruling, which made Connecticut the second state to legalize such unions, came four years after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts. In that interim span, the movement had suffered a series of setbacks, including
ballot provisions in a number of states that banned same-sex marriage.
“Connecticut's marriage victory came at a critical moment in the national movement for marriage equality,'' said Anne Stanback, who led the Love Makes A Family coalition, which pressed for marriage equality in the legislature, in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
“In the beginning of our campaign, many people said it was impossible to win the freedom to marry,'' Stanback recalled. “Toward the end of our campaign, even our opponents were saying it was inevitable. Neither of those was true and had we believed either one, we wouldn't be here today."
Ben Klein, who helped litigate the case for GLAD, a Boston-based legal advocacy and public policy group, said Connecticut helped ease the way for the movement's later victories.
“We experienced loss after loss after loss and there was a real question, ‘was Massachusetts a one off?' '' he said. “‘Howare we going to get the second state, how are we going to keep the marriage equality movement alive?' It was Connecticut that kept the marriage equality movement alive.”
Just a few days before the Kerrigan ruling took effect and same-sex couples began marrying in Connecticut, California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in that state.
“Same-sex couples in Connecticut were married and it was national news,'' Klein said. “Just seeing the smiling happy faces of loving and committed couples in this state, showing the country not only that it could be done, but it could be done without discord, and that this movement was not going away.”
Many of the leaders of the effort to legalize samesex marriage in Connecticut attended Sunday's cele- bration, including Beth Kerrigan and Jody Mock, the lead plaintiffs in the case; state Sen. Beth Bye; and former state lawmakers Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor.
Also in attendance was Richard Palmer, the state Supreme Court justice who wrote the Kerrigan deci- sion.
“I owe a lot of folks in this room a debt of thanks,'' said Chris Heffner, a 28year-old neurolinguist at the University of Connecticut, as he scanned the crowd.
He marveled at the swift pace of history: “I remember when I was in high school, I was still figuring out my sexuality but I was like, ‘oh civil unions are fine,' '' he said, citing those marriage-like arrangements that were deemed unconstitutional by the Kerrigan ruling.
“I've evolved in my views over my lifetime,'' Heffner said.
Rameikas and other young activists say the struggle for LGBTQ rights isn't over, even though same-sex marriage is now legal throughout the U.S.
Later this week, he will lead a protest in response to a Trump administration memo that could end legal recognition for transgender people.
“It makes me so happy to be here,'' Rameikas said, “but it's not over.”