Folks have been holding symbolic gay weddings all around the capital city for years, but this was a big mass wedding, a big gay mass wedding, held eight days after the U.S. Supreme Court "so ordered" the recognition of same-sex marriages. Austin's Big Gay Wedding event was held on the south steps of the Texas State Capitol on the Fourth of July. Over 40 couples exchanged vows and waved legal marriage certificates for all to see. Many folks deserve kudos for pulling the event off, but the chugging dynamo at its heart was local attorney Lenore Shefman, whose social justice work in this town way back in the Nineties (before she left Texas to earn that law degree) included a bit of activism in front of the Governor's Mansion – a protest in the form of, you guessed it: a big gay wedding.
