Others were skeptical of the legislature’s ability to annul the licenses.
“What are they going to do? Are they going to unmarry us?” Sue Hyde said from the second position in line. Hyde is the New England field organizer of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Not all onlookers were from the Boston area. Maria Boroff drove with her partner and five-year-old daughter from Philadelphia to witness the historic event.
“I never thought it would come,” said Boroff, who wore diamond-shaped glasses and beads around her neck. “I’m not a marriage activist but President Bush turned me into one. He’s trying to take away a right I didn’t have.”
From the front of the line, with the prospect of marriage hanging in front of her, Hams looked back at how far she and society had come.
“Never in a million years, [it] never occurred to us that we would be able to do this,” she said.
—Claire Provost contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Jessica R. Rubin-Wills can be reached at rubinwil@fas.harvard.edu.