Myself, my wife, and one of our housemates just got back from the excellent street party going on in Cambridge, MA. The beginning of gay marriage was attended by thousands of cheering people, young, old, straight, gay, whatever: anybody who is anybody in Cambridge was there.
We arrived about 11:15pm, to find the party already in full swing. The police were still trying vainly to hold Mass Ave open, though all of the side-streets nearby were closed. As we arrived, about twenty police in riot gear marched past, and I worried for a moment --- then realized, "They're on our side this time!"
Throughout the night, the police were really cool, protecting the little isolated group of God-Hates-America and God-Blew-Up-The-Space-Shuttle (I kid you not!) nutjob protestors. More importantly, they formed a wall keeping an aisle open for couples to go in and out of City Hall. (Don't forget, thank the cops when they're good! Being a cop is a really hard job.)
There were about 15 protestors and several thousand celebrants. (Our highly amateur estimate pegged the number around 3000.) By the time we arrived, there were about two-hundred couples inside already, and every time another couple went up the steps, the whole crowd went wild.
There were a bunch of signs floating around above the crowd (my favorite read simply "Yay!" in giant red letters) and a brass band playing in one corner, surrounded by dancing celebrants. Meanwhile, morris dancers jingled their bells in the middle of the street. Around 11:30 the police finally gave up trying to keep the street open as the crowd compressed off the sidewalk. "Going to the chapel" was the preferred song of the evening, though nobody really knew more than the first verse and the chorus. We saw a couple of heterosexual couples go into City Hall as well --- and I thought God bless, there's no discrimination tonight.
As the clock moved to midnight, the crowd counted down in proper Times Square fashion and burst out cheering like crazy again. It was an incredibly romantic atmosphere, everyone just chanting and cheering like crazy as the couples came out, having filed their "notice of intention to marry" forms. Nobody was actually married yet --- Massachusetts has a three-day "cooling off" period, as well as the STD tests, and there will be no judges available to waive the cooling off period until morning.
My roommate went and said hello to a couple from his church, the first in line, who had been waiting for 24 hours. Lots of kids with their mothers. A woman near me told a friend about her two moms inside. The cameras whisked up and down, shining lights on everybody. Everybody was all smiles except for the little protest crowd (who left right after midnight, under heavy police escort), and one stylishly dressed black woman who wandered through shaking her finger in the air and talking about Jesus while everybody stayed five feet away.
We met up, as planned, on the edge of the crowd at 1pm and, as we walked away, talked about how good it was to be on the ones partying for once, and not the ones on the edge in bitter protest.
Tonight is a night of love in Cambridge. You couldn't be there and fail to feel it.