Love Before It Was Legal

April 25, 2024

By Benjamin Perry

On September 3, 1971, in an old Victorian South Minneapolis home, Rev. Roger Lynn officiated the world’s first official gay marriage. More than forty years before Obergefell v. Hodges would legalize same-sex weddings across the country, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell said, “I do,” with a valid wedding license, standing before a Methodist minister. Through valiant courage—and a bit of just-minded trickery—the couple bore prophetic witness to their love, which Rev. Lynn and God were able to bless, decades before our country’s lawmakers had the moral fortitude to do the same.

​After graduating from Garrett Theological Seminary in 1964, Rev. Lynn was appointed the Minister of Education at Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, a prominent congregation in downtown Minneapolis. Conflict over his opposition to the Vietnam war led him to leave that call, however, and he took a job doing street ministry at a city drop-in center. While some might have considered that move inauspicious, it proved a fortuitous turn of events: It was in that ministry that he would meet Jack and Michael. The drop-in center had a close relationship with Gay House, an institution partly funded by the United Methodist Church to serve the Minneapolis gay community.

​Jack and Michael were already part of Gay House’s leadership when they decided to try to make their relationship official in the eyes of both God and country. (No strangers to taking a stand, Jack had already served as the first openly gay Student Body President at a U.S. university.) Understanding that no county clerk would grant a marriage license to “Jack” and “Michael,” Jack legally changed his name to Pat Lynn McConnell. And when Michael went to the Mankato County Office where he had established residency and requested a marriage license for himself and his “fiancé Pat Lynn,” the clerk readily agreed.

​Originally, Rev. Lynn wasn’t supposed to preside at all. But when the first minister backed out of the service just two days before the wedding, the couple asked their friend Roger if he would officiate. “And I said, ‘Well, sure, of course I’ll do it!’” Lynn remembers, “I jumped at the chance, having no idea what the implications would be.” For such a momentous, historic event, Lynn says the service itself was fairly ordinary. “It was just a regular Methodist ceremony,” he recalls, “But at the end of the wedding, when Jack and Mike kissed, it was visceral. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is different.’ It really pushed me to deal with my own homophobia.”

​If Roger found himself a little surprised by the experience, when the wider world discovered what had happened, it ignited an uproar. “At first the Bishop was angry,” Lynn chuckles, “But he said, ‘Well half the feedback I’ve gotten wanted me to have you defrocked, but half of the people supported you.’ And there was nothing in the discipline at the time that said I couldn’t do it. I had not broken any laws.” The Bishop wasn’t the only one who was angry. In addition to numerous letters, when Rev. Lynn arrived at Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, where he still worshipped, on Sunday, he was greeted by a rather pointed sermon. “The whole time, the minister preached vilifying the wedding and talking about what a terrible thing I had done,” he remembers. But with a wink in his eye, he confesses, “I’ve been a rebel—to be cast in that light did not bother me one bit. In fact, I liked it.”

​When the clerk found out about the trickery behind securing the marriage license, he refused to file and make it official. However, Jack and Michael still got the last laugh. In 2018, they returned to the same county court and petitioned the judge to certify the original license. With same-sex marriage now law throughout the land, the judge granted their request and ordered the license filed. Forty-seven years after Rev. Lynn and the couple signed the papers, it was filed and verified by the Mankato County Court—making Jack and Michael’s marriage license the earliest of its kind.

​For Rev. Lynn, this entire story testifies to how God’s love has always transgressed unjust boundaries. “Jesus continually brought people on the margins into the center of his ministry,” Lynn says. It’s part of why he never had any compunction about officiating the wedding in the first place. “The Church has historically been all about supporting the love between two people. Why shouldn’t they do it with two gay people?” he asks. “There’s no logical reason. Especially since, when you look at it, this whole concept of gender is an invention anyways.”

​As Rev. Lynn fondly retells the story and describes his now decades-long friendship with the couple, he observes how this underlying openness invites us to experience God more fully. “When we’re willing to meet another person at the center of who they are,” he says, “It intertwines with our essential being, we come to a deeper understanding not of that other person, but of who we are.” Whether it’s a lifelong marriage or an intimate friendship, the relationships we form change us. And, in this case, they moved the world towards God’s love. And there’s an added benefit to doing what is just: Sooner or later, the rest of the world often comes around. Rev. Lynn is back on staff at Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, now an open and affirming congregation. “On September 3rd, I preached and celebrated the 53rd anniversary of Jack and Michael’s wedding,” he smiles, “They’re still happily married. We’re going out to lunch next Wednesday.”