Many Same-Sex Couples Have Waited a Long Time for Marriage Opportunity

Finally able to formalize their relationships

Gail Dosik walked into a party, hung up her coat and fell in love; 26 years later, she was finally able to make the beautiful stranger she met that night her legally wedded wife.

An awful lot happened in between.

Six months after meeting, Dosik and Jackie Stevens had a commitment ceremony, a radical endeavor in the early 1980s. The couple recited vows, signed a document they had found in a recently published same-sex legal guide, and celebrated their union in front of friends and family. It meant the world to them, but absolutely nothing in the eyes of the law.

Half a year might seem like a short courtship, but had Dosik and Stevens been a heterosexual couple, they could have married the day they met. Instead, they were forced to wait until same-sex unions were legally recognized to officially tie the knot, which they did a quarter-century later in the Fairfield, Connecticut, town hall.