Two men seal vows with a kiss
And then they were wed...HE to HIM
Newspapers from Denton, Texas, to Singapore carried headlines of what was then a strange curiosity: a gay wedding. The movement for marriage equality really began to take shape in the 1990s, but we often forget that activists had their eyes on marriage much earlier, even in the throes of the gay liberation movement. The gay wedding that briefly captured everybody's attention took place at the kitschy Harmony Wedding Chapel in Houston on October 6, 1972. Thanks to some recent reporting
in the Houston Chronicle, this all-but-forgotten episode of LGBT history has been dusted off and remembered, this time in the context of a movement that is on the cusp of attaining nationwide marriage equality. I, for one, knew nothing about this, but I'm happy to know that my city has a place in the history of marriage equality activism. Follow me below the fold to find out how Antonio Molina and William "Billie" Ert tied the knot in the Lone Star State over 40 years ago...
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Well, from the picture above, the "how" is obvious. Molina (left in picture), an ex-tackle from Brownsville, and Ert would have never obtained a marriage license anywhere in 1972 without being a little creative. It had been attempted before, perhaps most famously by Jack Baker and James McConnell in Minnesota, who tried to get a license to wed in 1970. By the time Molina and Ert made their attempt, the Minnesota case was working its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which of course would decline to hear it. What separated the Texas case from the Minnesota case was a wig, a dress, and some makeup.
Ert, as it so happened, was also a drag queen who performed as Mr. Vicki Carr, and the couple used that to their advantage when they applied for a license in Wharton County. They were likely pleasantly surprised when they actually pulled it off and got their license from the clerk. Later, Wharton County Clerk Delfin Marek lamented:
We wouldn’t have issued any license if we’d known he wasn’t a female.
From the Wharton County clerk's office, Molina and Ert were off to the small Harmony Wedding Chapel, located on the Sims Bayou just off of Gulf Freeway. There, they were married by Rev. Richard Vincent. From the
Chronicle:
“We marry souls, not bodies,” said Vincent, an activist minister who helped found the gay-friendly Dallas Metropolitan Community Church. “They met the requirements as set forth by the church; they love each other, and they had a license, as I signed it. As far as I’m concerned, they are married in the eyes of God and in the eyes of Texas.”
And the world noticed:
By 1970s standards, Molina and Ert’s story went viral, making front-page headlines from El Paso to East Asia. “Two men seal vows with a kiss,” the Denton Record-Chronicle reported on Oct. 6, 1972. The Straits Times of Singapore’s headline read, “And then they were wed … HE to HIM.”
Molina’s hometown newspaper, the Brownsville Herald, ran a photo of the beaming couple holding their marriage certificate, he in a suit and tie and Ert in a white beaded dress, elbow gloves and wig. That wig, it turns out, was what separated their success from the handful of gay couples who already had attempted to get married.
Of course, it didn't last long. When they realized they'd been duped, the clerk's office refused to record the license. But it was nevertheless the first "legal" same-sex marriage in Texas. What followed in 1973 was the first in a string of anti-gay acts by the Texas Legislature, when it voted to clarify the law to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. Which was made even more explicit during the anti-gay panic of the late 1990s and then enshrined into the Texas Constitution in 2005. This leads the
Chronicle to proclaim that the marriage of Molina and Ert "set back the Texas gay marriage movement 40 years," asserting that the public's discomfort with gay marriage can be attributed to the early characters of the movement.
Towleroad's piece on the story specifically highlights that charge by the
Chronicle. Given the reality of a society that criminalized homosexuality and a medical profession that pathologized it, I highly doubt the public's "discomfort" had much of anything to do with Ert being a drag queen. I tend to agree with UC-Berkeley law professor Melissa Murray:
What these cases did was to bring gay couples, loving couples to the forefront, out of the closet and out of the shadows. I don't think you could have a contemporary marriage movement without them.
As for Molina and Ert, they split up a year later, and Ert tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide (he ended up dying in 1976, and Molina in 1991). After their marriage, Ert wrote the following to a gay publication:
This is 1973 and not 1956. I see no reason why the gay community should have to hide behind closed doors to live and love who they wish, be them two females or two males. The U.S.A. is the Land of the Free, so they say, and tell us.
It's over 40 years later, and we're still not there, but we're getting closer. It's a shame Molina and Ert aren't here to see it.
As for Harmony Wedding Chapel, it still stands and offers cheap weddings to the public. Now, hopefully more will recognize it for the LGBT landmark that it is.
More reading on the subject here:
http://swamplot.com/...
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