Before facing the general electorate, constitutional amendments in Massachusetts must be approved by two successive special meetings of the state Legislature known as constitutional conventions. Last June, lawmakers voted 151 to 45 against a measure that would have placed an amendment barring same-sex marriage on the state ballot. That action essentially tabled any ban until 2012.
As he arrived in Baltimore on Friday for a hockey tournament, Peter Hams said he had a personal reason to celebrate Thursday's California court decision.
Growing up as the son of two unmarried "moms," Hams, 28, said he always had to watch what he said about his family, even among his closest friends in open-minded Cambridge.
Now that Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd are married -- they waited in line for hours with Peter to become the first same-sex couple in the commonwealth to obtain a marriage license -- he said: "For me it is a huge weight off my shoulders. I don't have to explain anything to the people I meet. I can just say my parents are married. This is the kind of privilege that most heterosexual families take for granted."
