Windows on Our Community

Julie and Hillary Goodridge, the lead plaintiffs in the historic same-sex marriage case, Goodridge vs. The Department of Public Health, and their daughter Annie look on as Boston Registrar Judith McCarthy completes the forms for their marriage license. The Goodridges were the first same-sex couple to receive a license from the city of Boston. Mary Bonauto, lead attorney in the case, and Mayor Thomas Menino witness the moment. On May 17th, ninety-nine gay and lesbian couples applied for licenses at Boston City Hall and were greeted by Mayor Menino and offered wedding cake. Over all, more than one thousand gay and lesbian couples across the state applied for licenses to marry on the first day of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

“It was wonderful to be a part of this triumphant moment.”

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"As I shot this photo I was thinking, 'Here are all of these faces that I seldom see anywhere else in the course of covering events in the GLBT community.' In the Dyke March I tend to see many more women of color and young women. I love the creative nonconformity of this group of people."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"Robert was the Boston Police Department's liaison to the GLBT community. He had been in the post for less than a year. The Globe had done a story about him and his horse, but the picture they ran made him look old. I first met him at a police department meeting with community activists. When I saw Robert in the flesh, I got the biggest crush on him - one of those love-at-first-sight, tongue-tied, tripping-over-yourself-in-his-presence kinds of crushes (for those of you who know what that's like - yikes!). He was a sweet man. This was taken at Pride, when the festival was held on City Hall Plaza. He passed away about three years later."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

According to the Boston Globe 3,000 people attended this vigil. The inhumanity of Matthew Shepard's murder galvanized protests from across a wide spectrum of society. Pictured here are Angel Velazquez and Emile St. Lot. The vigil was organized by a coalition of local religious, political, and civil rights organizations.

"When you first hear about an incident like Matthew Shepard's murder, you're completely appalled and horrified about what has happened. Then the extensive media coverage ensues and we forget the raw emotion. The horror begins to seem less startling - it's just another event."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Left to right: Pam Sneed, Diane Beckett, Sidne Anderson, Craig Hickman, Denise Williams, Comika Griffen

"We did this photo session at the Firehouse in Jamaica Plain. Gail Burton and Diane Beckett are friends whose talent I respect tremendously. This is one of those shots that I knew I was going to like as soon as I took it. The play, written by Gail and Diane, received a lot of attention in the press, which dubbed it 'Boston's first fully produced African American lesbian play.'"

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

"In a weekend marked by anger, frustration and more than a few arrests, the return of the AIDS memorial quilt to the nation's capital was highlighted by an awe-inspiring and peaceful candlelight march which drew thousands of participants, all banding together to light the darkness around the Ellipse." Rex Wockner, Bay Windows, October 20-26, 1988

"I was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking back at this huge mass of people bathed in candlelight. I had run ahead of the march. My heart raced at 100 mph and I thought, 'This is one of the most beautiful sights I'll ever see.' The times were so oppressive, and the sight of all of those people walking silently with their candles seemed such a great statement of strength. In 1988, AIDS was still considered an enormous stigma for those afflicted, but between that October 7 and 11, thousands of ordinary people and hundreds of celebrities protested an unresponsive, negligent, and discriminatory Reagan Administration. We all felt energized and hopeful."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"This was done on assignment for Bay Windows in the first year that the North American Gay Volleyball Association had a tournament in the Greater Boston area. I took a lot of typical game action shots, but this one got used twice, so I guess they liked it. The team is the New York City Shade. I caught them doing their team pre-game pump-up in the sun. I thought they were cute."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

This woman provides a kind of commentary on the issue of butch-femme, long controversial in the lesbian community. Is she implying that butch-femme is not a dichotomy, but can be embodied in the same woman?

"I politely asked this woman if I could photograph her rear end. As I followed her in a squatting position, while trying to get the shot, everyone around us began laughing. I was pretty amused too. She finally stopped and I got the photo."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Penni Ashe Matz, a systems analyst at Verizon, a Vietnam veteran, and a tireless trans-activist, gathered with protestors at the Middlesex Courthouse for the sentencing of William Palmer, charged with the murder of Chanelle Pickett, a transgender woman. The jury found Palmer guilty of assault and battery, but acquitted him on the charge of first-degree murder.

"I had been to the courthouse twice - once to hear testimony by the forensics expert, and again for the sentencing hearing. I remember going into the chambers of this very stern and imposing judge to get permission to take pictures in the courtroom. At the hearing, the judge imposed a heavier sentence than the district attorney requested and pointedly addressed Palmer, telling him that he deserved a harsher verdict than he was getting. At the time, I thought, 'This is tragic and outrageous.' I'm constantly amazed at the negative attitudes people have about transgender people. Really, why are they so threatening?"

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"Let's just call this the Iconic Male Pride Shot. I have no recollection of which organization the float was for, and no idea who this cutie is. If you do, please let me know."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

Gay membership in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) became controversial in 1989, after James Dale of New Jersey, a freshman at Rutgers University, acknowledged to himself and others that he was gay. A Boy Scout since 1981, Dale became an Eagle Scout in 1988 and an adult member and assistant scoutmaster in 1989. In a newspaper interview, Dale commented that homosexual teenagers needed gay role models. The BSA subsequently revoked his adult membership in 1990. Dale sued the BSA in New Jersey; the case subsequently went to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court handed down its decision in the matter of Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale on June 28, 2000, ruling in favor of the BSA's right to exclude gay males.

"These two Eagle Scouts came up to me and said, 'Here's a photo opportunity for you,' as they pulled out their Eagle Scout cards.'"

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"Grace and I worked at GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders together in the early '90s. I have tremendous respect for her, the work she's done with the Boston Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY), and her stately comportment. I call her 'The Empress.' I would look for her every year as I worked the Pride beat."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

In 1996, when Circuit Judge Kevin Chang ruled against the State of Hawaii in Baehr v. Miike, the battle for domestic partnership began to take center stage. Threatened that a state like Hawaii would legalize domestic partnerships, conservatives filed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the US Congress. DOMA, signed by Clinton in 1996, stated that the federal government would not recognize legal, same-gender marriages from any state, and allowed individual states to refuse to honor legal same-gender marriages from other states. Once federal DOMA passed, similar bills were filed in most state legislatures, and the battle has raged on since. Vermont is currently the only state that recognizes same-gender civil unions and assures state benefits.

"The legal and financial dilemmas that gays and lesbians are left in because of this inequality are enormous."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

"Openly gay Councilor Scondras was at the peak of his power and popularity here. I rode the MAC float for a bit up Boylston Street. I was struck by the scene and asked the Councilor to jump into the photo. It became my first front page, above the fold, color photo in Bay Windows. The week it came out, I was in Provincetown; it was a pretty nice conversation piece."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

 People with AIDS and their supporters were protesting MGH's failure to explain the lack of availability of aerosolized pentamadine (AP) in Boston. This potentially lifesaving treatment - widely prescribed in other cities, including New York and San Francisco - had been proven effective in stemming bouts of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), the illness causing the largest number of AIDS-related deaths in the US.

"I look at this photograph now and think, 'Most of these men are probably dead.' They, and so many other ACT UP members, had the vision and courage to go out and engage in actions that educated the public and changed policy regarding AIDS. This was the first die-in I experienced; I would see many more ACT UP actions in the coming years. ACT UP held unexpected and dramatic actions all over the country. They knew how to work the press. It was media theatre and politics at its best."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Gay parents Stephen Galante and Bill Pluckhahn, the fathers of five adopted children, join Arline Issacson, the Co-Chair of the Mass Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, herself a mother, in a conversation with Bay Windows editor Andrew Rapp. Che Maydun’s film Daddy and Poppa provided the context for the discussion of gay and lesbian parenting.

“This Ford Hall Forum was a ‘family affair’ that I conjured up with Tom Formicola the Executive Director of the Ford Hall Forum. Tom and I work in the same office suite at Northeastern University, and we generated the idea for this forum in a friendly chat. Look for it on my resume.”

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

Octavio Delgado of Brookline, MA, joined the crowd outside the State House to support the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage as the legislature convened on the first day of a state constitutional convention. The legislators planned to take up a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Thousands of people from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities came to the state house to lobby their legislators to oppose the proposed amendment. Anti-gay marriage proponents, most of them bussed in from out of state, also came to express their opinions. After four days of heated debate, a compromise amendment was passed by a handful of votes promising civil unions while also prohibiting same-sex marriage. The constitutional convention must reconvene in 2005 and pass the amendment again before placing it on the ballot for a statewide referendum.

“Here’s the quintessential message about the constitution for me—‘Defend It.’”

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves and Rep. Alice Wolf, two stalwarts of the civil rights struggle for LGBT people, are regular participants in the Cambridge and Boston Pride celebrations.

“Ken Reeves and I became acquainted during his term as mayor of Cambridge. Coming to know Ken and work with him was especially gratifying. I was impressed with his title but especially with his intelligence and intensity. The expression ‘Take no prisoners’ applies very well to Ken.”

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

“An intimate shot of a good friend. Imani is an activist, actor and performance artist now based in New York City. We did a triptych of images for head shots and publicity shots that attempted to explore different facets of gender identity. Imani self-identifies as a male, which is more apparent in his head shot than here.”

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

Note: This photograph and story appeared in the original Windows on our Community exhibition, but is not included in the physical touring exhibition.

ACT UP/Boston, the Reproductive Rights Network, and the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights collaborated to protest Cardinal Bernard Law's interference in public policy on issues of AIDS education, abortion rights, and gay and lesbian civil rights. The intention was not to disrupt the church service but to call attention to these important issues, and to Law's inordinate influence in the public sphere in Massachusetts.

"Another example of the GLBT community setting trends."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Note: This photograph and story appeared in the original Windows on our Community exhibition, but is not included in the physical touring exhibition.

"This was a lucky shot. The woman in the photograph was there and when I turned around, she was gone. I was told that she was not a Lesbian Avenger; nonetheless she appears in this photo as the iconic representative of that group. When I looked at the contact sheet, I realized that this photograph was taken as the Dyke March joined the Gay Pride March in Copley Square. In reviewing the shots I took just before this one, I thought it looked as if she were standing on the controversial bed float in the march on which two women simulated sex acts."

Photograph and comments by Marilyn Humphries.

Note: This photograph and story appeared in the original Windows on our Community exhibition, but is not included in the physical touring exhibition.

"I've been a part of the Boston-based Theater Offensive since 1991 - first doing photography, subsequently joining the board of directors, and ultimately serving as President. I'm now an ex officio board member, although I prefer the designation 'Dowager Queen.' Abe Rybeck, director of The Theater Offensive, served as artistic director for this shot, in addition to being the author of the play; he came up with the concept and I executed it. Adam Morris (a.k.a. Eve Adams) is featured in her role as Mother Theresa. I never got to see the shot from the other direction."

Photograph and comments by Craig Bailey.

Note: This photograph and story appeared in the original Windows on our Community exhibition, but is not included in the physical touring exhibition.