''This is a really special day ... although it is different than our commitment ceremony. For us, this was taking part in a new right that had long been denied us.... I owned the house ... and I always worried, what if something happened to me?" Williams said. "Would Cori get the house? What would happen to her? It was scary.''
Claire Williams of Burlington, Vermont, who married her partner Cori Giroux at midnight on September 1, 2009, the first day that the state allowed lesbian and gay couples to legally wed. Williams and Giroux said they were previously joined in a commitment ceremony in Baltimore, MD, and then again in Vermont through a legally-recognized civil union. Vermont was the first state to offer civil unions, and is now the first state to enact same-sex marriages through a legislative measure. In fact, the legislature passed the bill twice after the state's Governor, Jim Douglas, vetoed the measure this past April. (Rutland Herald)
