OPENING SHOT, Financial Times: In the spring of 1967, Jack Baker asked his partner Michael Mcconnell to marry him.

OPENING SHOT,

Financial Times, April 19, 2025.

In the spring of 1967, Jack Baker asked his partner Michael Mcconnell to marry him. The answer was yes, but the question of how the pair might actually wed was more complicated: at the time, same-sex marriage was not legal in America.

Several years, a law degree and two ministers later (one dropped out), they said their vows on a warm September day in 1971, becoming the first same-sex couple to get their marriage license in the States.

In the spring of 1967, Jack Baker asked his partner Michael Mcconnell to marry him. The answer was yes, but the question of how the pair might actually wed was more complicated: at the time, same-sex marriage was not legal in America.

Several years, a law degree and two ministers later (one dropped out), they said their vows on a warm September day in 1971, becoming the first same-sex couple to get their marriage license in the States.

This story is one of 100 such tales chronicled in LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality, a history of the movement published by Rizzoli this month.

It begins with figures like Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas, who provided “a rare and valuable model of queer domesticity” in the early 20th century, as Frankie Frankeny writes (Stein was radical for referring to Toklas as her “wifey”).

It follows secret social clubs for lesbians in 1950s San Francisco through to the couple who helped establish the legal precedent for interracial marriage in the 1960s, up to 2015, when same-sex marriage was finally enshrined as a fundamental human right across America. [Stories from 1930s–2024]

LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality by Frankie Frankeny is published by Rizzoli.