WASHINGTON — There were yellow roses, champagne toasts and tiered white-frosted cakes to celebrate the District of Columbia’s first same-sex marriages Tuesday morning.
In a joint ceremony at the downtown headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign, three of the first gay couples to marry under the city’s new law said their vows and exchanged rings in services that underscored the historic significance of the day.
“Today the love that you have recognized all along is recognized by the District of Columbia,” the Rev. Dwayne Johnson of the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington said as he declared Darlene Garner and Candy Holmes of Laurel, Md., “legally married.”
With the issuing of the first marriage licenses to same- sex couples Tuesday, the city follows five states — from Iowa to Massachusetts — in allowing gay couples to marry.
Same-sex couples were first able to apply for licenses March 3 but, like all couples, had to follow the city’s three-day waiting period before getting hitched.
Mayor Adrian Fenty, who signed legislation in December to legalize same-sex marriage, congratulated the newlyweds after their services, saying the weddings “were a great step forward for equality and for our city that has always been a standard-bearer for treating people equally and justly.”
Council members David Catania, I-At Large, and Jim Graham, D-Ward 1, who are gay, watched the services.
At the D.C. Superior Court, about 15 couples arrived in the first hour Tuesday morning to pick up their licenses.
U.S. security marshals, who were stationed throughout the courthouse, escorted one woman out of the building after she began yelling that “God won’t recognize” same-sex marriages.
The woman had been in line with the couples waiting for their licenses.
