Calm after the storm

The first anniversary of gay marriage in Massachusetts is suddenly upon us tomorrow. History has seldom felt so anticlimactic.

Some 6,000 couples have said their ''I do's," and despite all the fire-and-brimstone predictions, the state is still here. The nuclear family has not fallen apart.

The news is how little news there really has been.

The Supreme Judicial Court took the right course 18 months ago in declaring that equality is absolute, not relative, and that rights have to apply to all. But even in liberal Massachusetts, not everyone cheered. Some believed the judges -- especially Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall -- had written law from the bench. Others believed the action had been taken in haste, or that such a watershed 4-to-3 decision should be left to voters, not to one of seven judges.

Emotions were even higher when the issue of gay marriage moved to Beacon Hill, where lawmakers debated an amendment to ban gay marriage in place of civil unions. The sight of children holding antigay signs on Beacon Street and praying in the State House is not one I'll forget anytime soon. And yes, the media also greeted it with a fervor usually reserved for invasions of countries said to be harboring weapons of mass destruction. Gay Marriage was History, and no effort was spared in recording it.

Not surprisingly, clergy were among the most vociferous of opponents, charging that gay marriage was part of a larger erosion of values. Most African-American ministers appeared unswayed by the notion that gay marriage was a civil rights issue. After I wrote a column praising state Senator Dianne Wilkerson and Representative Marie P. St. Fleur for supporting gay marriage, more than one minister informed me that it was the clergy who were truly representative of the black community, while the lawmakers, and the media, were shamefully out of touch.

Something happened though, once people actually started getting married. Something truly wondrous. Almost everyone calmed down. This did not occur immediately. But by late summer, conversation about it seemed to be subsiding. Couples got married and went on with their lives. It got hard to remember what all the fuss was about.

Across the country, voters remain deeply ambivalent, and gay marriage loses whenever it's put to a popular vote. But those votes have all been conducted in places where gay marriages aren't actually taking place, where the popular image of the havoc it will wreak hasn't yet been trumped by boring, everyday reality.

Even in Massachusetts, the battle over gay marriage isn't officially over. But it is clearly on the wane. The Legislature will vote, again, on whether to place an antigay marriage amendment on the ballot for 2006. But in fact, Governor Mitt Romney seems to be carrying the torch for a ban with very little support. The public has moved on. Lawmakers are eager to do the same.

There is plenty of precedent for this. Every major civil rights advance seemed cataclysmic in its time. Yet even the hardest fought of those battles recede in time. Women vote, blacks in the South vote -- and now, in Massachusetts at least, men marry men and women marry women. Always, states survive.

To be sure, the opponents of gay marriage have plenty of ammunition left, and many other states in which to wage their battles. Some say gay marriage will be commonplace across the country in a few years, and it will be hard to remember why it was ever controversial. I'm not sure that's true, knowing how much more deeply entrenched the opposition is, especially in the South.

Then again, two years ago, few would have guessed that this anniversary would have arrived so quickly. Gradually other states, such as Connecticut and maybe California, will brave the storm of gay marriage. May they also know the calm that soon follows it, the acceptance of justice at last being served.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.