Southwest Journal: A pioneering couple
“This is my magic room,” Michael McConnell says as he leads me into his bungalow’s dining room in the Lyndale neighborhood.
The walls are painted with a floor-to-ceiling mural of trees, mountains and a swirling sky. McConnell tells me his friend painted the room decades ago when he and his husband Jack Baker moved into the house in 1971.
Magic indeed.
McConnell and Baker were the first known same-sex couple in the nation to apply for a marriage license. They were married on Sept. 3, 1971 — more than four decades before the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
Now, a few months after their 44th anniversary, McConnell and Baker are telling their full story.
By: Madison Bloomquist
Story Date: 2015-12-22T05:51:00+00:00