February 19, 2009 Issue
Crowd Gathers at Watauga Courthouse for National Freedom To Marry Day Event
Several people waved signs and flags at last Thursday’s Freedom To Marry Day event at the Watauga County courthouse. Same-sex couples exchanged vows before requesting marriage licenses from the clerk of court.
Last Thursday, February 12, dozens of women and men gathered on the steps of the Watauga County Courthouse to participate in a ceremonial exchanging of vows between same-sex couples to coincide with National Freedom to Marry Day. The event included an initial gathering outside the courthouse, where several members of the group exchanged vows before entering the courthouse to request marriage licenses from the clerk of court. Local group BooneImpact organized the action.
According to BooneImpact member Elizabeth West, the ceremony is the result of a national call for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual couples, with the support of their allies, to request a marriage license from their local clerk of court on February 12. Freedom to Marry Day has been celebrated since the passage of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) in 1996 that established the second-class status of same-sex relationships.
According to Wikipedia.com, the most notable National Freedom to Marry Day was February 12, 2004, when, following a directive from San Francisco, California Mayor Gavin Newsom to his county clerk, the City and County of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On February 10, Newsom had asked the clerk’s office to make the changes on the “forms and documents used to apply for and issue marriage licenses…in order to provide [them] on a non-discriminatory basis.”
“I think everyone should have the right to marry who they want to,” said Jodi Schneider, a local resident who recently relocated to Boone from Massachusetts.
BooneImpact is a group that developed with the national reaction to Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that made same-sex marriage illegal. In recent months, the group organized an intergenerational march through ASU football tailgaters in November, hosted a campus information table on December’s National Day Without A Gay and held a Happy New Queer party in January.
BooneImpact also sent batches of petitions to President Obama calling on him to repeal the DoMA. According to West, response to each group event has been overwhelmingly positive.
To learn more about BooneImpact, email booneimpact@googlegroups.com or call 828-719-8206 or 828-234-0795.
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