Photo by R. Bertrand Heine
Today I honour Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell who 40 years ago today applied to be married in Minnesota, USA and were denied the right. The US Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal, but they did manage to obtain a license from a different county, and found a Methodist minister to marry them in 1971. The beat the Canadian couple Michel Girouard and Regeant Trembley to the punch by a year
Jack told LOOK magazine at the time: “Straight and gay people both asked us why we can’t live together quietly and not cause trouble, the answer is simple: we want equal rights – whatever heterosexuals have, we want too.”
Someone always has to go first. These guys set a legal precedent and were making the case for equality on The Phil Donahue Show decades before the rest of us, and before I was born.
As Jack himself has said, their determination for public acceptance “set in motion a series of thought currents, that, decades later, continue to transform an entire world.” We owe them a lot.
Tags: first gay marriage, gay marriage, Jack Baker, James Michael McConnell, LOOK magazine, Michel Girouard, Minnesota, Regeant Trembley, same sex marriage
