Decades before any state had
seriously considered legalizing gay marriage, long before anyone had thought of
creating—never mind repealing—a policy called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” before
Reagan, before AIDS, before the American Psychiatric Association determined that
homosexuality was not a mental illness, and before half the people currently
living in America were even born, a man named John Singer stepped into the King
County marriage license office in Seattle.The year was 1971.
With him was another man, Paul Barwick, whom he’d met recently at a meeting of the Seattle chapter of the Gay Liberation Front. Barwick was just back from Vietnam, 24 years old, still coming out of the closet. Singer was a little older, 26, very out and very political. He’d served as an Army medic in Germany because of his conscientious-objector status. In the spot reserved for religion, his military dog tag read: “Ethical Culture.” Earlier, at college in New York, he’d been the only member of his ROTC unit who was also in the SDS—Students for a Democratic Society.
These two men, Singer and Barwick, had become fast friends, occasional lovers, and, in a sense, business partners. “The business was gay liberation,” Barwick, now 65 and living in San Francisco, explained recently.
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