As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s eve, same-sex couples in Maryland started getting married. Among the first were James Scale, 68, and William Tasker, 60, (above) who were wed inside Baltimore City Hall by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake shortly after 12:30am.
The guys, who met on Christmas 1977 at gay bar on Boston Street, were one of seven couples married at City Hall. “It’s just so hard to believe it’s happening,” Scales, who was finally able to legalize his 35-year relationship with Tasker, told the AP. “It just means a lot to be able to spend the rest of our lives together, and legally.”
“There is no human institution more sacred than that of the one that you are about to form,” Rawlings-Blake said during the brief ceremony. “True marriage, true marriage, is the dearest of all earthly relationships.”
