“When they moved in in September, we were at the height of planning our wedding,” McLoughlin said. “And just this past week, at our last study break of the year, we all watched our wedding video.”
McLoughlin said that he is excited for the upcoming legal ceremony even if it won’t change his day-to-day life.
“I didn’t need this to marry Jason, because I already knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him,” McLoughlin said. “But it’s nice to have an institution behind us.”
McLoughlin, who sees the cause for gay marriage as “a civil rights struggle,” said that though a constitutional amendment may overturn the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in favor of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, he is not too concerned.
“I kind of doubt they will be able to rescind the marriages that have already taken place,” he said.
MARRY ME HERE
Another Harvard affiliate to get a marriage license, Robyn Ochs, was 11th in line at Brookline Town Hall Monday morning.
Ochs, who is now 45, has worked in the romance languages department for 21 years—“my entire adult life,” she said.
She met her partner of seven years, Peg Preble, through a mutual friend at a Boston University theater performance.
“It’s very exciting but it also feels a bit odd, because we’ve been together for seven years and we’ve been de facto married for five of those years,” she said. “It’s like we’re getting married but we’re already married. I feel the legal reality is catching up with our daily reality.”
Ochs said a number of her friends are also getting married in the next few weeks, and that many of them are long-term couples with grown children.
“We have four other weddings to attend this week. And these are all couples that have been married for up to 25 or 30 years,” she said.
Ochs herself has been very involved in the gay marriage debate in Massachusetts, and taught a class last semester at Tufts entitled “History, Community, Politics: Emergence of Sexual Minority Voices in the U.S.,” commonly known as “The Gay Agenda.”
“I have been down at the state house most of the days of the constitutional convention,” Ochs said. “I have called Romney’s office on a weekly basis, and been very vocal in my disgust.”
And though Ochs and her partner will be legally married this May, they will wait to celebrate their marriage with a large ceremony with over 150 people on September 4.
“I really wanted to get married in my own state. I was going to wait until it was legal here,” Ochs said.
—Staff writer Claire Provost can be reached at jprovost@fas.harvard.edu.