E-Mail This Article to a Friend SOMERVILLE Defying the Man BY CAMILLE DODERO

When Somerville mayor Joseph A. Curtatone hobbled onto the steps of City Hall on Monday morning, he didn’t look like much of a fighter. The city’s second-youngest chief magistrate had ruptured his right calf muscle doing tae kwon do the previous Tuesday; nearly a week later, he was still in pain and plodding along on crutches. But before the 50 or so people assembled in front of City Hall — among them openly gay State Senator Jarrett Barrios (who was there only in his official capacity) and 10 or 12 same-sex couples, at least three of them from New York — the mayor was a fighter, or at least a representative dissident. That’s because Somerville’s Board of Aldermen had gone a step further than the rest of the state, voting unanimously to grant out-of-state couples marriage licenses — one of only four Massachusetts cities, along with Provincetown, Springfield, and Worcester, to do so. This decision stood in bold defiance of Governor Mitt Romney, who insisted that a 1913 law forbade issuing licenses to couples whose marriages would be illegal in their home states.

"We’ve always been on the right side of justice, fairness, and equity," declared Curtatone, with the mischievously disobedient air of a class president leading an insurgence against the high-school principal. "And it will be no different today. No matter who you are or where you come from, you fill out that application and you will be given that license to marry." The crowd went wild. Amy Zimmerman and her partner, Tania, who’d traveled from Manhattan to Massachusetts with their three children, started to cry. Their 10-month-old squirmed in a carriage. Their other two children, ages five and four, were at the Museum of Science with Zimmerman’s parents because, she explained, "We weren’t sure if there’d be people saying mean things."

But as it turned out, no one was saying mean things at Somerville City Hall on Monday. The staff warmly brought the same-sex couples inside, leading them upstairs in groups of five so they could fill out the necessary paperwork and help themselves to free doughnuts, coffee, and a chocolate cake donated by Rosie’s Bakery. Outside, the atmosphere was downright happy, with helium balloons tied to the front railing, multicolored carnation petals crumbled on the front steps, and a woman blowing bubbles. The only audible protest took place when the woman unleashed a fleet of soap bubbles at a grumpy old man in aquamarine slacks who was ascending the front steps. He growled nastily, "Don’t blow them things at me!" Then, as City Hall’s front doors opened for him, he whimpered defenselessly, "I’m straight! I’m straight!"

The first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license was Julianne Gale and Vincenza Martorano, two 21-year-old Somerville High grads dressed in oversize hoodies and baggy jeans. They’ve been together for two and a half years, and were platonic high-school buddies for twice that long. Gale can’t remember the exact night she proposed to Martorano; she does remember that they were on the couch. They’d been so anxious to be the first Somervillian same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license that they showed up Sunday at around 10:30 p.m., running into the mayor as he was leaving for the night. Gale and Martorano passed the next 10 hours with a group of friends, singing songs and playing the guitar. They ordered Chinese food from a Teele Square take-out joint and had it delivered to the steps of City Hall.

Out-of-state couples came too, but they were in the minority. Dionne Aleman and Nancy Huang, both 23, flew in from Gainesville, Florida, at 10:15 a.m., rented a car, and drove straight to Somerville to apply for their license. Bill Raymond and Frank King, two gray-haired men from a Baltimore suburb, also flew into Boston on Monday morning for their license; they planned to fly home later in the day and then return to Massachusetts over the weekend to hold their ceremony in Provincetown.

Then there were Kim Emery and Kathryn Baker, another couple from Gainesville, Florida, whose application for a marriage license was rejected in Cambridge on Monday night. Accompanying friends to Central Square for the festivities, they’d gotten so swept up in the excitement that when a stranger mistakenly informed them that out-of-state couples could apply for licenses in Cambridge, they’d filed into City Hall with the rest of the line. "With all the popping flashbulbs and the cheering people, it felt like winning an Academy Award," laughed Emery. But when they admitted they had no plans to reside in Massachusetts, Cambridge officials wouldn’t accept their application. When the couple walked outside, spectators continued to cheer unknowingly. "We were like, no, no, no," Emery said, waving her hand as though brushing away a bug. "We didn’t get it."

But they did get it in Somerville. And when the chaos died down on the first floor, Curtatone sat in his office, his injured leg propped up on a chair, and defended his city’s choice to grant marriage licenses to out-of-state couples like Emery and Baker. "It’s just a question of fairness and equity and justice," he said, employing the same holy trilogy of synonyms he’d used earlier in the morning. "We’re not going to abide by the use of a law that was motivated to stop interracial couples from marrying in Massachusetts as a barrier to stopping same-sex marriages. That is absolutely outrageous." Then he returned to fighting mode. "We’re on the right side of fairness and justice — and we’ll fight that fight every day of the week." How would Somerville deal with any penalties imposed by the governor? "We’ll fight them. Absolutely." And does the mayor of Somerville feel eclipsed by the media circus in Cambridge? Nope. "They mighta had a bigger party, but we had a bigger purpose."

At four o’clock, Somerville city clerk John J. Long sat down at his desk for a final tally. On May 17, the City Clerk’s Office dispensed 10 birth certificates, issued eight dog licenses, granted eight heterosexual-marriage licenses that had been requested the previous week, fielded countless questions from reporters calling from Georgia to Japan, notarized one document, assisted in one genealogy search, processed the City Hall mail, and presided over one same-sex wedding held upstairs. And, of course, the City Clerk’s Office accepted same-sex marriage-license applications — 37 in total, with as many as 10 from out-of-state couples. Looking down at a notepad, Long admitted that the grand total of 37 could’ve included one or two applications from heterosexual couples. But by that hour, all the paperwork had started to look the same.