They filled Courtroom Number 22 to capacity, spilling into overflow space several courtrooms away. Traveling from as far away as San Francisco and Honolulu, lawyers, journalists, and many others seriously interested in the future of marriage equality converged in Boston at the John Joseph Moakley Court U.S. Courthouse May 6. They came for mostly personal reasons, all hoping to see and be a part of LGBT history in the making.
And there was some drama, though not of the usual courtroom variety. A loudly pulsating fire alarm began blaring near the end of the proceeding, requiring the evacuation of the entire nine-floor building.
"Somebody smelled smoke, setting off a fire alarm on the ninth floor," explained a security guard, reassuring everyone heading back inside the building after a 40-minute break.
But before the fire alarm sounded, a gay community legal icon, attorney Mary Bonauto, had already presented her case against the constitutionality of a 1996 federal law that defines marriage, for all federal purposes, as the union of a man and a woman. After 14 years, the offensive against the Defense of Marriage Act ( DOMA ) was underway.
Before giving Bonauto the green light to proceed, Judge Joseph L. Tauro, a 1972 Nixon appointee, called the proceedings to order, greeting the quieted courtroom with a hearty, "Good morning."
That welcome was not the only greeting dozens of lawyers, journalists, and the general public, received heading upstairs to seventh floor. Before their eyes, a message, etched in stone on a wall facing an ascending stairway, spelled out: "Justice is but truth in action," a 1914 quotation from the late U. S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who, as a lawyer dedicating his career to public service, had earned the moniker the "people's attorney."
Throughout the nearly two-hour long oral-arguments, Tauro stood at his podium as Bonauto, civil rights director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders ( GLAD ) , argued on behalf of 17 people.
The Gill et al. v. OPM plaintiffs are seven gay couples and three widowers, all married in Massachusetts under the 2003 Goodridge decision. While the state affords them all the rights, benefits, protections, and responsibilities of legal wedlock, the federal government, under DOMA, denies them more than 1,000 federal programs, benefits and legal protections afforded to opposite-sex couples, including, among others, health insurance for spouses of federal employees, Social Security Act survivor and retirement benefits, and eligibility to file joint federal tax returns.
Tauro appeared to listen carefully. His questioning of both Bonauto and W. Scott Simpson, senior trial counsel for the U.S. Justice Department, indicated keen awareness of the challenge Gill presents. Bonauto is asking the court to strike down Section 3 of DOMA.
But hometown fans were focused on Bonauto. At times, they strained to hear her low-key, soft-spoken delivery. Thanks to court clerk Zita Lovett's skillful handling of VCR technology, observers were able to both see and hear the speakers—their every word and gesture displayed on two 50-inch plasma monitors, one inside Courtroom Number 22, and the other a few doors down the hall in overflow space.
Wearing a dark-blue power suit, Bonauto was armed with numerous, legal-sized pages of notes and argued with the precision of a skilled surgeon, avoiding rhetorical flourishes but cutting to the core of DOMA's discriminatory treatment of same-sex married couples under federal law—slice by slice.
Many in the courtroom expressed confidence that Bonauto can once again—as she did seven years before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court—strike a big win for equal marriage rights. In 2003, the state's highest court agreed with Bonauto that the state constitution requires the state issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples the same as it does to straight couples.
"Mary didn't miss a beat," said Holly Gunner afterwards, outside the courtroom. "She and the GLAD legal team had an answer to every itsy-bitsy thing."
"I am not a lawyer," said Gunner, "but I learned in high school about the Constitution. It states that every power not given to the federal government is reserved to the states. And family law is one of those powers reserved to the state."
Gunner did not have to travel far from Boston's western suburb of Newton to the Moakley Courthouse, located on the city's scenic water front harbor, replete with scenic and panoramic views. Her trek was short jaunt down the Massachusetts Turnpike, arriving in South Boston shortly after eight o'clock. "I was here early," she said, recalling that she attended the argument for Goodridge as well.
The importance of Gill prompted Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, to catch a red-eye flight from San Francisco, touching down a Logan Airport at brisk hour of 6 a.m. And Pat Gozemba, a retired professor of English, captured top honors for her Honolulu to Boston transoceanic plane ride.
"I did come back for this," she said, outside the courthouse, during the false-alarm evacuation.
Eric Ritter of Cambridge also hopes that Bonauto's arguments win the day. His partner of 16 years and spouse for several of them died this past December. "Because the federal government does not recognize our marriage," he explained, "we're subject to paying estate taxes," which Ritter says, would not be the case if not for DOMA. The father of a 14-year-old, Ritter said, "It's an awkward thing to have to tell your kid that the government doesn't think we should be married. It's very unfair."
Ditto that, nodded lead plaintiffs Nancy Gill and Marcelle Letourneau of Bridgewater.
"Just the other day in the car," Gill said, "our 10-year-old son said to us, 'What's the big deal?'"
©2010 Keen News Service
