spotlight
michael mcconnell and jack baker, at their home in minneapolis photo courtesy angela jimenez)
we received those letters and began to see more people coming out, telling their families and standing up... We could see that transformation taking place. The sense of commitment that you two have to each other and to marriage is amazing to me. You saw it as a right and that it’s something that should be a given. Where did that come from? Jack:When Mike wanted to get married, I decided that I was going to have to
go to law school. I was a practicing engineer and had no interest in law school, but I decided I had better go if I was going to figure this out. One of the first courses that you are required to take in any law school is Legal Research; it’s where you learn how to do solid legal research. After the course was completed, I decided to find out if I had learned anything and went to the law library and read the marriage statute. That’s where I found that it refers only to parties getting married; it doesn’t say anything about male or female. One of the other courses I took was Constitutional Law and in it they talked
about how all citizens are entitled to “Equal protection under the law.” That’s where it really came from. We also have a rule of law that says, “What ever is not forbidden, is permitted.” In the statute, I read that marriage between two persons of the same sex is not forbidden. So, it just all fit together. I realized we as citizens, had equal rights to the same privileges everyone else has and just decided then, to push on. I thought it was going to be much simpler to accom- plish... After the first year of coursework, I anticipated it would be a ten-year fight in the courts. The logic of it was so simple and clear. But, in reality, it took 40 years to get there. Michael:The other piece of that is the relationship part. I had already been through a four-year relationship with someone, we decided it wasn’t going to work for the two of us and mutually ended it. What I learned from that really inspired me to want the kind of relationship where love and commitment were important. To build and grow that relationship over time was very important. I don’t want to say that the length you have been together is rare, though it is certainly less common on some level. How did you number one: Manage to stay together? Number two: Come to understand you had the right to get married? For many of us in those early days, it wasn’t even a consideration. Michael: I think for us, it had a lot to do with what Jack was saying, equal protection under the law. My mom told us, “You are as good as anybody else” and I believed that. If I looked in my own family, it was long-term, people
24 RAGE monthly | FEBRUARY 2016
stayed together. It wasn’t that they were without some level of dysfunction, every relationship is. My feeling was that if you are going to build a successful life, it’s best to find someone who can help you build that life. Jack: It also gets down to the fact, that there is only one way to deal with a
bully and that’s to stand up to them, so they’ll wish they hadn’t bullied you. When you have bullies with power, who were simply trying to abuse with it, we just decided we had to stick with it. The question became who would win and we defied all of them and just kept fighting. The more they fought, the harder we fought back. Because, we knew that we were entitled to equal protection under the law, the same as every other citizen. It was just a question of when would the Supreme Court finally come down and recognize it in the Constitution. What are your biggest hopes around what you want people to take away from this book? Michael: One of the things that I would say, is that in working with the University of Minnesota Press as opposed to a traditional publisher, that people would think that is academic and be boring or dry. That isn’t the case; they publish a lot of GLBT material and published our book with the idea that it would have a broader audience. They also did it in the hope that it would be used as curriculum material and be around for many, many years and would be used in GLBT programs in college, in junior colleges and even in high schools, as a part of studying civil rights movements throughout the country. On a personal level, I think that a person can sit down and read the book and
make it their own... I think our story is very human, regardless of gender and can give insight into relationships in general. I’m hoping that it inspires a new generation to go and take a look at these collections that are in existence. To explore their own history and if it inspires them and to write something about it. This book took us about three years to write with Gail [author Gail Langer Karwoski] and it’s a daunting process for many people, but, you don’t have to write a book, you can compose a long article, write a short story or whatever it is. Recording that history and having that experience is a powerful thing.
You’re both an inspiration to me, that’s for certain.
The Wedding Heard ‘Round The World: America’s First Gay Wedding is available on
amazon.com. For much, much more of this interview, go to
ragemonthly.com.
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