Blame Canada: equal marriage rights in Canada will also allow U.S. gays to wed legally. How will that affect the fight for marriage rights at home?

A few days before Prime Minister Jean Chretien's June 17 announcement that Canada would become the first nation outside of Europe to grant equal marriage rights to gay men and lesbians, Beth Hayes and Pam Trainor of Spencer, Ind., drove across the border to exchange vows. Chretien's announcement came a week after a court in Ontario, where Hayes and Trainor were headed, ruled that equal marriage rights had to be granted in that province immediately.

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 become 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 by Chretien's announcement that his 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 judges ruled that excluding gay and lesbian couples from the institution of marriage was unconstitutional and discriminatory. While the similar rulings in Quebec and British Columbia gave the national government until July 2003 to address the issue of marriage rights for same-sex couples, the Ontario court ruled that as of June 10, the Canadian government's definition of marriage was invalid and must be changed from "one man and one woman" to "two persons."

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.

As a result, many gay couples from the United States are making plans to cross the 49th parallel in order to tie the knot. And that's welcome news in SARS-weary Toronto, where businesses are buzzing about an anticipated boom in "GMTs," or gay marriage tourists.

Still, gay activists in the United States are cautious in their response to the news from Canada. "This will have tremendous repercussions here, all for the good," says Evan Wolfson, executive director of the New York City-based Freedom to Marry, which is lobbying for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in the United States. "Gay people will go to Canada, get married, and return to America, where people will be able to see what real-life gay married couples look like. They'll realize how wrong that discrimination is. This decision puts wind in our sails, though our work clearly isn't over. Canada has now shown us we can win."

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 patch-work of discriminatory laws in place that state quite clearly that marriages [between two people of the same sex] will not be honored," Wolf-son 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."

In particular, the groups worry that couples may return to the States, face discrimination despite or because of their Canadian marriage license, and then litigate individually rather than working in solidarity with civil rights organizations already in place. A case argued in a conservative state where the courts are loaded with antigay judges could set a nasty precedent that would deal a blow to the overall campaign for equal marriage rights in the United States, Wolfson says.

Such concerns no longer apply to Canadian gay couples. Among those immediately taking advantage of the Ontario court's ruling were lawyer Michael Leshner, 55, and Michael Stark, 45, a project coordinator for a printing company. The couple, who have been together 22 years, were legally wed on June 10, the ceremony conducted by a justice of Ontario's superior court. For Leshner in particular, it was a victorious day. He had played a role in the series of court decisions leading to the June ruling, successfully suing the Ontario government to recognize the spouses of government employees in 1992.

The two men's first kiss as a married couple, captured by a phalanx of media cameras, was pictured on front pages of newspapers across Canada. "This is the end of legally sanctioned homophobia in Canada," Leshner says. "We have placed a stake through the heart of the modern-day vampire of homophobia. It's dead."

Leshner says he hopes the Canadian move will have some effect, on American lawmakers, but as a lawyer, he doesn't hold out a great deal of hope. "America and Canada are both democracies that have a constitution. The difference is, here we actually read it," he says.

Whatever the impact of Canada's new equality across the border in the United States, American couples who have been yearning to get married in a legally sanctioned ceremony are certain to head north--or east, from Alaska or Hawaii--to take their vows. The process is relatively easy and inexpensive [see sidebar], as Indiana residents Hayes and Trainor can report.

Despite a previous ceremony to mark the legal recognition of their civil union in Vermont in 2002, the women say they wouldn't have traded the experience of a Canadian wedding for anything. "We're not interested in going to court over this," Hayes says, acknowledging that Indiana is one of the 37 states banning recognition of same-sex marriage. "We just wanted to do it, as a political statement. And we're very glad we did."

Hays is the associate editor of the Montreal Mirror.

5 steps to getting married in Ontario

1. You both must be 18 years old. If you are 16 or 17, you can marry with the written consent of both parents.

2. Decide if you want a religious or civil marriage, and contact the appropriate parties. Ceremonies can be performed by a religious organization that performs same-sex marriages or by a judge or justice of the peace.

3. Locate a marriage license issuer--a clerk in most cities, towns, or villages. One partner can apply alone as long as that person has a birth certificate or passport plus a second photo ID for each bride and groom. Application forms are available online.

4. Bring U.S. $115 to pay the fee for the marriage license.

5. Have your ceremony planned. To get a license you will be required to provide details about where and when the wedding will take place in Canada, and marriage licenses are good for only three months after the date of issue. Twelve weeks after the ceremony, you can apply for a certificate of marriage.