10 Years On: Gay Marriage in Massachusetts

David Wilson and Robert Compton

As plaintiffs in the Goodridge case, David Wilson and Rob Compton started a conversation about marriage with America. But a decade later, their relationship is even stronger because of the conversation they started with one another.

“Because of the case, we wind up having ongoing conversations about issues that other couples don’t necessarily have,” says David. “Any time we’re asked to do an interview or sit on a panel, it’s an opportunity for reflection about what we believe in, our commitment to each other, and what marriage means. It’s a learning experience that has only deepened and strengthened our relationship.”

That relationship started nearly 20 years ago when the men, who had both previously been married to women, met at a support group for gay dads. They fell in love and had a commitment ceremony in 2000, but a spate of medical problems further underscored the frustrations they would experience without the formal protections they had in their first marriages. Enter: Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, a chance to help change the world.

“A lot of people would have been happy to step into that role, and we are grateful to have made that contribution,” says Rob of the experience. That’s not to say the contribution came easy. During the case, conversations about equal marriage weren’t easy to have. Backlash even came from camps that should have been supportive; Rob remembers speaking to (ostensibly pro-equality) college groups pontificating that an anti-gay backlash would jeopardize progress on other fronts, from adoption rights to anti-bullying initiatives.

“When they were finished I asked them, ‘How many of you want us to continue?” recalls Rob of one crowd. “Everyone raised their hand.” Case closed.

Other contingencies seemed harder to crack. “When we started talking about marriage, the communities of color were not very supportive,” says David. And ten years later, he says, initiatives supporting particularly marginalized groups, like transgender youth of color, lag far behind the progress of the overall marriage movement. That’s an issue Wilson devotes much of his work to today, as a diversity consultant and board member of GLAD. (He’s also sat on the board of the HRC.)

Overall, though, the couple is heartened by the way that the conversation Goodridge started has changed the discourse of a country. Sure, it has allowed for important legal protections. But a new world of out married couples has helped many gay people feel better integrated to the greater social fabric, with profound impacts from the home to the workplace. “I remember gay friends with great experience and education who felt as if they had a glass ceiling above them. They didn’t aspire to get to the top,” says Rob, who was once fired from his job as a dentist for being gay—and is now the executive director of the DentaQuest Institute, a national industry organization. “Today they recognize that they can reach for the stars.”

And David and Rob, now grandparents and living in Provincetown, continue to reach for each other. “Most people get married, go on with their lives, and never question why they’re together and what marriage means to them,” says David. But because of their role in history, their marriage has a meaning they could never forget.