Upon arriving in Leamington, a small town of 26,000, the women made a series of phone inquiries. After locating the local Unitarian Universalist church and the Ontario provincial government office that would issue them a marriage license, they set a date. And on Friday, June 13, Hayes and Trainor became one of the first American same-sex couples to be legally married. Theirs was not a civil union, nor was it solely a symbolic church ceremony. The act was a legal one and on completely equal footing with the marriage of any heterosexual couple in Canada.

"We were so happy. It was a beautiful ceremony," says Hayes, a Ph.D. candidate in Indiana University’s music department. "Here’s a society where we’re equal. We think that’s phenomenal." Though the wedding took place in Canada, the reverend conducting the ceremony was an American expatriate, Christine Hillman, who now lives in southern Ontario. "I was thrilled to conduct this ceremony," Hillman says. "It felt like we were making history."

Indeed, they were. By getting married, Hayes and Trainor became one of the first couples to take advantage of the June 10 decision by the Ontario court of appeals. That decision was made permanent that the Canadian government would not exercise its right to appeal the ruling to the country’s supreme court. "There is evolution in society," the prime minister said. By declining to appeal, the Canadian government also agreed to extend equal marriage rights nationwide, not just in Ontario—a process that has already begun.

Building on previous decisions by courts in both Quebec and British Columbia that favored equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, the 61-page Ontario declaration was sweeping in its ramifications. "Exclusion perpetuates the view that same-sex relationships are less worthy of recognition than opposite-sex relationships," the decision read.

The ruling makes Canada only the third country in the world—after the Netherlands and Belgium—to legalize equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. But more important to its neighbors to the south, Canada welcomes U.S. couples to marry. The Netherlands requires that at least one member of a married couple be a resident, and Belgium’s law does not offer full equality with heterosexual couples.

But Wolfson warns that Canadian marriage licenses will most likely not be recognized in the United States. In fact, the federal government and 37 states already have laws prohibiting recognition of marriages between same-sex couples, regardless of where they are performed. "There are already a patchwork of discriminatory laws in place that state quite clearly that marriages [between two people of the same sex] will not be honored," Wolfson says.

On June 13, Freedom to Marry, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund issued a joint statement in response to the Ontario court ruling. The groups warned that while getting married seems like a great idea, "many [same-sex] married couples will also experience discrimination…and couples with a member in the military, or on public assistance, or in the U.S. on a visa will face particular complexities. Couples must be prepared to live with a level of uncertainty while we continue our work to end marriage discrimination here."

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