Michael Hendricks and René Leboeuf celebrated their 20th anniversary of marriage on Monday — a wedding that had been broadcast to the whole province as it was the first time a same-sex couple got married in Quebec.
The couple had spent six years and $300,000 in court fighting for their right to get married, and their wedding took place in Montreal on April 1, 2004.
“If you look at our photos, look at the smile on our faces,” said Hendricks.
“The officiant, who was a lovely woman, was reading our vows and we realized we finally made it. […] And it was just a question of five minutes and it would be over and all those years of fighting and struggle would be concluded.”
Having already been together for 30 years at the time of their wedding, Hendricks, 83, and Leboeuf, 68, say the marriage was important for gay people to get full rights as Canadian citizens and Quebecers.
The gay and lesbian communities at the time were pushing for same-sex relationships and parental rights to be recognized by the government, and were still reeling from the AIDS crisis.
Hendricks and Leboeuf had long been activists involved with ACT UP, a grassroots group fighting to end the AIDS epidemic, and saw how their friends lost everything when their partner died.
“If you lost your partner, you also lost your apartment because your relationship wasn’t recognized and you were considered to be just rooming there. The family would come and take all the furniture,” said Hendricks.
“We wanted to change that, and we did.”
The couple says they were “naive” about what marriage entails when they started their legal battle, but they wanted gay people to have the legal right to inherit, to share and to have children and have them recognized as their own children.
“Then we would be equal to heterosexuals. But nothing would ever change until we did that and that took a while to educate the public about,” said Hendricks.
The wedding itself was spectacular. It took place in Montreal’s Chinatown, featured a pink cake large enough to fit a person inside — which the couple says was a parody of heterosexual weddings — and journalists were fighting to get a seat in the front row. Every camera jumped at the opportunity to capture the couple’s passionate ceremonial kiss.
“It was the most important victory at that moment. We celebrate that moment. It was a very happy day,” said Leboeuf.
“We obviously were very happy and pleased with ourselves,” Hendricks added.
Leboeuf threw the flower bouquet at the wedding reception, and the couple noted that the woman who caught it got married shortly after.
He says other gay couples started getting married “right away.”
The suits the men wore at their wedding are now at the McCord Museum in downtown Montreal as a piece of the city’s heritage.
The couple spent the day celebrating 20 years of marriage — and 50 years together — at home, looking at their photo albums.
The secret to a lasting relationship? “To be honest with each other, to have a sense of humour and to take the person as they are,” says Leboeuf.
Despite other forms of LGBT activism being popular, Leboeuf and Hendricks say their fight for marriage was met with backlash from the rest of the community, who they say didn’t want negative attention drawn to them.
The couple was even featured on the cover of Ici magazine with the headline “Marriage, adoption, family… Are gay people becoming too straight?” in 1999.
“It was not everyone in the community who wanted to get married,” said Leboeuf.
“Our slogan was, ‘We want the right to choice,’ because when you don’t have any rights you don’t have any choices.”
The couple says that though they consider to have won their battle, the 2SLGBTQ+ community — particularly trans people — still face discrimination.
“[Trans] people were always among us, and because they have asked to be recognized, they are now being punished, and it’s a shame. It’s shameful the way they are treated. It’s painful to see,” said Hendricks.