A wrinkle in time
On the day the Goodridge decision came down, I put these personal concerns aside — not an easy task — as I tried to make sense of the ruling. We had about 25 hours before we had to go to press. All our stories for the week were done. Could we tear up the paper and start from scratch? More important, if we scrambled to put together a package, would it be worth it? We wouldn’t be published until Thursday — two days after the ruling. Would we be able to come up with material that would offer readers anything more than what they’d get in Wednesday’s daily papers? It took about 10 seconds to process those questions and come up with an answer: of course we should — and could.

The next task was to get all the writers and editors on board. Not everyone was convinced we should cover the story for that week’s issue. The benefit of waiting would help us figure out what the ruling said. And we wouldn’t have to chuck all the work we’d already done. As I pushed to cover the story immediately, it was the first time I felt as if I were under extra scrutiny because of my sexual orientation.

In the end, the issue we pulled together was one of the best I worked on in my five-year tenure as news editor at the Phoenix. Dan Kennedy wrote a prescient political piece predicting exactly what Republicans would do with the issue in the years to come. Kristen Lombardi outlined the battles ahead on Beacon Hill. Harvey Silverglate told us why the ruling was so strong. Camille Dodero captured the media’s difficulties in making sense of the ruling. Hilariously, Chris Wright documented what the public was saying about the court’s decision. David S. Bernstein outlined the planning by right-wing groups to fight the ruling. Adam Reilly caught the response of plaintiffs. And Deirdre Fulton got reaction from local pols.

As for me? Well, in the months following the ruling, I aggressively pushed for coverage of all things having to do with same-sex marriage. It was a civil-rights issue; an issue that the Phoenix, a progressive alternative weekly, needed to own. I didn’t care if anyone thought I was obsessed with the issue — I was. But it was an issue that any news editor of the Phoenix should have been obsessed with.

Six months later, just days before the moratorium imposed by the SJC on its decision was up, our second daughter was born. Eight days after that, my partner and I married. The rest is history.

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Susan Ryan-Vollmar is the editor of the South End News and Bay Windows, New England’s largest LGBT newspaper.