BRUNSWICK

Acting on a law that went into effect at midnight on Dec. 29, local same-sex couples stormed the office of Town Clerk Fran Smith seeking marriage licenses Saturday morning.

During November’s general election, Brunswick voters lent their approval by a nearly 2-to-1 margin to the statewide citizen’s referendum to legalize gay marriage.

In response to the law’s local popularity, the clerk’s office, normally closed on weekends, opened for three hours Saturday to accommodate the demand.

Reached by telephone Saturday, Smith said there was “much interest” by couples seeking the required paperwork. 

“It’s been very busy,” Smith said, shortly after 9:30 a.m., working on a license application even as she spoke. “There are lots of folks here.” 

When the doors closed at noon, seven couples had received licenses.

Most were planning ceremonies elsewhere, but two of them — Cathy Meaney and Anne Merrifield, and Katherine Wilder and Margaret O’Connell — were wed on the spot by attorney and District 2 Town Councilor Ben Tucker.

Although the town’s website specifically warned applicants it would provide licenses but not the personnel to execute the ceremonies, Tucker said he decided to be present to offer his services as an officiant.

“This community voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality,” Tucker said in an exchange of emails with The Times Record. “I was happy to play a small role in allowing couples to enjoy their basic civil rights, (for which) they have waited so long.”

In some municipalities, couples booked limousines, organized midnight ceremonies or stood in line to be part of historic exchanges of vows at midnight.

In Brunswick, the ceremonies kept a lower profile. Now that they have the necessary license, many couples are opting to wait and plan larger, more elaborate events during the traditional springtime an summer wedding seasons.

“I didn’t have anybody who planned to marry right then on the 29th,” said Rev. Sylvia Stocker of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Pleasant Street.

“There are three couples in my church who are planning weddings but only one of them has chosen a date yet, and that’s for early summer. They don’t want to rush the ceremony just to get it in on that day; they want plenty of time to plan it, just like other couples,” Stocker said.

There likely would be more interest if UUC still had a building of its own in which to hold such festivities. The UUC’s building, which formerly stood at the corner of Pleasant and Middle streets, was damaged beyond repair by an electrical fire in June. Its absence has left the congregation temporarily without a physical home while it raises funds to build a new one.

By then, there probably will be more same-sex parishioners who will be ready to pledge their vows inside it.

“There are people in my church who have been together for 30 years and have been waiting to marry,” Stocker said.

Stocker said she was a minister in Massachusetts when that state’s supreme judicial court — the first in the nation to proclaim such a decision — ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in November 2005. The law went into effect six months later, in May 2006. 

“The joy of couples who had wanted to do so for so long and suddenly were able to, it was amazing,” Stocker said. “It seemed in some ways a little more unreal, because it was a state supreme court ruling and not a people’s vote.”

Barbara Ross, of Bath, said she plans to wed her partner of two and a half years in 2013, “no later than August, but preferably earlier.”

“I think it’ll be a fairly decent-sized ceremony,” said Ross. “We decided to wait and plan something bigger, rather than to do it now just because we could.”

Ross said she has been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Now 30, she said she knew she at age 12 that she was gay, and that it’s been a long journey toward equality and social acceptance ever since.

The Nov. 6 referendum closes loopholes left open by the less-stringent legal framework of civil unions and domestic partnerships.

“Society before looked at you and they either accepted you or not,” she said. “Now, they have no choice but to see it the way it really is, that we are just as equal as everybody else. It involves our kids, being able to leave things to (her spouse-to-be) or the kids, and there’s nobody that can step in and override that.”

Ross met the woman who will be her wife through a mutual friend on Facebook.

She and her fiancée, who preferred not to be identified for this story, have four children between them — two early teenagers and two young children.

Both of the older kids understand what the law means, and they are excited for the upcoming wedding, Ross said.

“They’re happy that, in society’s eyes, we can finally be a family,” Ross said. “When we woke them up the day after the election, you’ve never seen four happier kids than on that morning.”