But Kris Mineau, president of the nonprofit Massachusetts Family Institute, said Friday that the California court decision represented another assault on a treasured institution. "What has happened here in Massachusetts is that marriage has been denigrated. It has been cheapened," Mineau said. "The California ruling has just exacerbated the notion that marriage is no longer held in high esteem."
According to recent state data, more than 10,000 gay and lesbian couples have married in the four years since the Supreme Judicial Court redefined marriage in Massachusetts to mean "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses," regardless of gender.
Fears that Massachusetts would become a same-sex marriage mecca for the rest of the country were quelled when then-Gov. Mitt Romney -- a Republican and a foe of gay and lesbian marriage -- unearthed a 1913 statute barring marriage in the commonwealth if a couple's home state did not recognize the union.
City and town clerks at that point were barred from issuing licenses to same-sex couples from outside Massachusetts, and there are no firm figures on how many such marriages have taken place.
Same-sex divorces also are hard to track because counties record those actions only by the last names of the parties involved. Carisa Cunningham, spokeswoman for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders here, said gay and lesbian divorces in Massachusetts probably numbered "in the several dozens."
(GLAD represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that prompted the Massachusetts court decision permitting same-sex marriage, and it also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in conjunction with Thursday's California decision.)
In a way, "Massachusetts has been like the reality TV show for gay marriage," said Karen Kahn, co-author of "Courting Equality," a book examining same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.
"When we were the only state, we were the ones who were 'out there.' We were the target for every kind of criticism, all the threats that this would destroy marriage, families and civilization."
Instead, Kahn said, "what we have had is four years of marriage equality. Nothing terrible has happened in our state. The Red Sox have won the World Series twice since the law changed. There continue to be little pockets of opposition, but almost none of it is not religious-based. Overall, we are doing just fine here in Massachusetts."
Kahn, 52, married her co-author and longtime companion, Patricia Gozemba, 67, in September 2005.
