Marriage License Granted in Blue Earth County
In mid August, 1971, Baker and McConnell took up residence with a friend in Blue Earth County. McConnell applied to the District Court in Mankato for a license to marry, which was granted after the waiting period expired. Rev. Roger Lynn, a Methodist minister, solemnized the marriage contract on September 3. The event took place in Minneapolis within Hennepin County, His signature made it the first lawful same-sex marriage in the United States.
At the time, Minnesota law required that a license must be issued in the bride's county of residence. Because there was no "bride", the Hennepin County Attorney argued, there could be no entitlement to a license. He convened a grand jury, which "studied the legality of the marriage but found the question not worth pursuing." The decision means, in effect, "that neither Baker, McConnell nor the Rev. Roger Lynn" would be prosecuted in Hennepin County.
In Minnesota, a marriage license, lawfully-obtained and signed correctly, by consenting adults, became a binding contract until annulled in a court of competent jurisdiction. No court – state or federal – has ever invalidated the contract executed according to the marriage laws in effect at the time. The couple insists that they were legally married.
In 2003, Baker and McConnell amended their individual tax returns for the year 2000, filing jointly as a single couple. They offered proof of a valid marriage license previously issued in Blue Earth County. The IRS challenged the validity of the marriage license and argued that, even if the license were valid, the Defense of Marriage Act did not allow it to be recognized. An appeal was dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Minnesota and affirmed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals .
Read more about this topic: Jack Baker (activist)
Famous quotes containing the words marriage, license, granted, blue, earth and/or county:
“Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believes in its inconceivable purity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader
who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed,
That I languished and pined till I granted the rest.”
—John Gay (1685–1732)
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)