Editor’s Note: This story is part of a project recognizing LGBTQ+ people who have shaped Washington ahead of the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride. To read more, click here . One of the first instances in the decadeslong path toward marriage equality in Washington didn’t make the front page of The Seattle Times.
On a Tuesday in September 1971, the story showed up on Page 4: “County balks at two men marrying.” Capitol Hill residents John Singer, 26, and Paul Barwick, 24, had sought to apply for a marriage license and been denied by a King County marriage license bureau manager. The two Army veterans immediately threatened to sue — and they did, becoming the first gay couple in Washington and the second in the U.
S. to go to court over the right to marry. “We’re two people.
We happen to be two genital males, but we are two human beings who happen to be in love and want to get married for various reasons,” Singer said at the time. (He later changed his name to Faygele Ben-Miriam, in part to reclaim the Yiddish word for “little bird,” a derogatory term used to describe an effeminate gay man.) Washington’s road toward marriage equality was one of incremental steps and setbacks, individual efforts and group movements that played out in courtrooms, legislative chambers and — eventually — wedding ceremonies, three years before same-sex marriage was legalized across the U.
S. Barwick and Ben-Miriam’s discrimination lawsuit was rejected by a King County Superi.
