MinnPost: Still in legal limbo despite 'Wedding Heard 'Round the World'

The first gay couple to get married in Minnesota are once again fighting for their legal rights, almost three years after the state legalized gay marriage, a year after the U.S. made the same move — and almost 45 years after they legally married here.

The Wedding Heard 'Round the World (Michael McConnell and Jack Baker)The first gay couple to get married in Minnesota are once again fighting for their legal rights, almost three years after the state legalized gay marriage, a year after the U.S. made the same move — and almost 45 years after they legally married here. The problem? Blue Earth County never recorded the marriage license it issued the couple in 1971.

When Jack Baker asked Michael McConnell to marry him in the late 1960s, McConnell agreed — so long as it would be legal. “That was the way it was done in my family,” he said. “We had longevity in love. Once you made that commitment, you expected it to last.” So Baker, determined to make good on his promise, went to law school and studied the marriage statutes, and found that gender was never specified. No gay couple had ever married, but there was nothing that said they couldn’t. So they did.

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Published in: MinnPost
By: Amy Goetzman