E-Mail This Article to a Friend To have and to hold (continued) BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

Head of the pack

As lead plaintiffs in the Massachusetts lawsuit seeking full marital rights for gay couples, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, of Jamaica Plain, have become household names. At least, much of their story has been featured in newspapers and on TV.

You may know, for example, that neither Hillary, 47, nor Julie, 46, grew up with the surname Goodridge. Rather, in anticipation of the birth of their daughter, Annie, now seven, the couple chose to change their last names, adopting the appellation of Hillary’s maternal grandmother because it sounded "nice." The switch, they reasoned, would signify a family unit, bonded by blood and love.

You may know, too, that the couple suffered a horrifying ordeal on what should have been the happiest day of their lives: the day Annie was born. In 1994, Julie gave birth to Annie via cesarean section. During the birth, Annie inhaled fluid and was rushed into the neonatal-intensive-care unit (NICU). That’s when Hillary, who’d been allowed into the operating room with Julie, faced trouble. Unlike the couple’s obstetrician, the nurses did not know the women as a lesbian couple. So when Hillary entered the NICU, a nurse stopped her cold. Recalls Hillary, "I told her, ‘I’m the mother.’ But the nurse said, ‘The mother just had a cesarean.’" It quickly dawned on Hillary that she had no legal standing to visit her daughter. She pleaded with the nurse; she cajoled her. She then waited for the nurse to leave and tried again. This time, she lied to get in. "I said I was Julie’s sister."

The incident marked a low point in the couple’s 16-year union. The two met in 1985. Julie was launching her now-successful career as a socially responsible investor. She attended a forum on Harvard’s effort to divest its money from South Africa, at which Hillary spoke. (She now gives out money on behalf of the Unitarian Universalist Association.) Neither made much of an impression on the other. Hillary remembers Julie sporting a kilt and a Shetland sweater. Julie remembers Hillary wearing a cowboy dress and a gaudy ruffle. "Her first impression of me was of a young Republican," Julie says, "and I saw her as an angry radical."

Romance bloomed anyway. And for the most part, life together has been, in Hillary’s words, "bliss." Marriage never entered their minds until three years ago, when Annie, then four, began to ask questions. One night, Annie and Hillary were talking about love. Hillary asked Annie if she knew anyone in love, and the girl ticked off some names. All were heterosexuals, all were married. "I asked, ‘Annie, what about Mommy and Ma?’" Hillary relays. "She said, ‘If you loved each other, you’d be married.’" It was a child’s brutal honesty, but it got the Goodridges thinking. "I started pondering what it all means," Julie explains. "What does it mean to her that we’re not married?"

Since the lawsuit was filed in 2001, the last two years have exceeded the Goodridges’ expectations. Neighbors who were cordial before — while shoveling snow or walking down the street — have met them with huge hugs and kind words. Some have snapped pictures outside the Goodridges’ home. On the flip side, they’ve had to deal with homophobia as they never did in the past. They’ve heard the irrational arguments made by opponents of gay marriage, such as "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." They’ve heard the hateful rhetoric of people like Fred Phelps, the Topeka, Kansas, minister who traveled to Provincetown to protest homosexuals just last month. Once, a bunch of high-school kids even urinated on their car while yelling, "Dyke!" "I’ve learned," Julie says, "that people will go to extremes to rationalize how uncomfortable they feel about homosexuals."

Now that their legal saga is coming to an end, Hillary and Julie are experiencing an emotional roller coaster. At times, they’re anxious and petrified. Other times, they’re excited and hopeful. Most of the time, though, they realize how committed to full marital equality they have become. Whatever the SJC decides, says Hillary, "We’re proud to be involved in this fight."

The law couple

In many ways, the law has served as a constant motif in the lives of Ellen Wade and Maureen Brodoff. For one thing, it’s the field in which both women have built their professional reputations. Wade, 55, owns her own Brookline-based firm, Wade & Horowitz, where she specializes in estate planning. Brodoff, 51, has worked as counsel at the National Fire Protection Association, in Quincy, for more than a decade.

For another, it’s the field that brought the two together in the first place. Back in 1977, Wade and Brodoff were both young, bookish, first-year law students at Northeastern University. There, they found themselves paired up for a mock trial involving the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Their assignment was to write and argue a court brief. To this end, they spent nearly every waking hour together, studying, reading legalese, and chugging coffee.

The work cemented a friendship that eventually blossomed into love. By 1980, Wade and Brodoff had made a commitment to each other. By 1981, they had moved into their first apartment, in the Mission Hill neighborhood. And by 1989, they had relocated to the sleepy suburbs, in Newton, and were celebrating the much-anticipated birth of their daughter, Kate, who is now 14. To this day, Wade describes her life with Brodoff as "wonderful, a true partnership."

As lawyers, the two have long been aware of the discriminatory treatment gay and lesbian couples must endure because they cannot get married. Such disparities, however, didn’t hit home until September 1999, when Wade was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. She was told that she had to undergo surgery. So she and her partner drew up the necessary paperwork to ensure that Brodoff would not be shut out of the process: they executed powers of attorney, health-care proxies, and wills. Still, they worried that hospital staff would disregard the documents, or subject them to scrutiny. Although the staff turned out to be receptive, the high anxiety of the moment left its mark. As Brodoff puts it, "Just the recognition that one of us could become sick or die, and that the other could be treated like a stranger, caused great distress. It was a defining moment for me."

The experience left the couple eager to seek legal action. They made their desire known to long-time friend and colleague Mary Bonauto, of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the lead attorney in the marriage case. In 2001, they joined six other plaintiff couples in suing the Commonwealth’s Department of Public Health for the right to wed legally. By then, Wade explains, "the timing [for a lawsuit] seemed right." Vermont, in fact, had just validated gay and lesbian partnerships by instituting civil unions. Politicians had begun to recognize that gays and lesbians deserve equal protections and benefits. The Massachusetts courts had ruled favorably on behalf of gay and lesbian families by allowing for second-parent adoption. "There seemed," she adds, "to be some chance of success for us."

Of course, Wade and Brodoff are astute lawyers. And they understand the judicial system enough to know that you should never predict a case’s outcome. The Supreme Judicial Court consists of seven justices, after all, each with his or her own thoughts and opinions. And although attitudes about same-sex couples are shifting in the plaintiffs’ favor — as evidenced by a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll last April showing that a slim majority of Massachusetts residents supports granting marital rights to gays and lesbians — Wade and Brodoff see the court as insulated from public opinion.

"We have no illusions that the [SJC] decision will come out one way or the other," Brodoff concludes. "Whatever happens, I guess we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it."