A lesbian-themed travel company plans to take advantage of the landmark Massachusetts high-court decision allowing same-sex marriage by organizing a mass wedding and cruise for as many as 1,200 women.
The company, Olivia, says the “ruling paves the way for us to start our cruise with a romantic, legal wedding in Boston” next July, according to the Boston Globe.
With lesbian singer k.d. lang “serenading us on board with special performances in Boston and Provincetown, and a week sailing to gorgeous, lesbian-friendly Montreal, it’s truly the ultimate honeymoon,” the group says on its website.
The July 3 ceremony is planned for three weeks before Beantown hosts the Democratic National Convention and about 48 days after the court’s decision is scheduled to take effect.
“When the ruling came out, it became very clear to us this was a chance for us to help make a statement,” Olivia founder and president Judy Dlugacz told the Globe. “We’re very excited. It’s going to be one of the most exhilarating, fun and deeply meaningful events.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage, however, call the plans premature and destructive.
“I regret that our state may now be known as the place for this type of activity,” Ronald A. Crews, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, told the paper. “It doesn’t make me proud of Massachusetts.”
Crews, along with other family-advocate groups, has been urging state legislators to figure out a way to detour the decision. Some lawmakers have proposed Vermont-style “civil unions,” offering many of the rights and responsibilities of marriage without using the term, but the institute rejects that plan.
As WorldNetDaily reported, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court decided Nov. 18 homosexual couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution and should be allowed to apply for marriage licenses, overturning a ruling by a lower court handed down in May 2002 that said state law does not convey the right of marriage to homosexual couples. However, the 4-3 ruling stopped short of declaring homosexual couples should be granted the licenses, and does not call for them to be immediately issued to the plaintiffs in the case. Instead, the court ordered the state legislature to come up with a solution within 180 days. It granted a stay of its decision in the meantime.
The Family Institute might try to put pressure on Holland America Line Inc., Crews said, according to the Globe, to make sure they know we “don’t appreciate this type of encouragement.”
The cruise, which will cost between $1,100 and $5,600 per person, depending on accommodations, already is two-thirds booked, Olivia says.
Brian Camenker, head of the Waltham, Mass.-based Parents Rights Coalition, fears homosexuals from across the nation will flock to Massachusetts.
“This is going to be like the starting gun of something you’ve never seen,” he told the Boston paper. “If this is happening three weeks after the decision, what are you going to see in three months?”
However, Valerie Fein-Zachary, founder of The Freedom to Marry Coalition of Massachusetts, asserted such comments amount to right-wing “fearmongering.”
Dlugacz, the founder of Olivia, told the Globe she has officiated at hundreds of lesbian commitment ceremonies since the company began in 1989.
But very few cruise lines or resorts would rent to Olivia at first, she said, noting she “had to really work to teach them not to be afraid.”
She has no plans now to back down on the July event.
“There’s always the sour grapes,” she told the Globe. “I don’t believe we’ve ever shied away from doing what we feel is right.”
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