I’m grinning ear to ear, but I bet not as much as Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend.  They’re the couple I featured in yesterday’s diary about the DC marriages.  Their smiles are totally infectious, and now I’m hooked.  

Turns out they were first in line at the court house to apply for a marriage license.  Here they are with their placeholder ticket.  Pictures and text courtesy HRC Backstory.

The first couple is Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend, together for 13 years.  Neither of them could sleep and they stayed up all night thrilled about this historic opportunity.  Sinjoyla told us: “I’m just excited because we’re able to get married. The institution of marriage is an institution that’s respected in every culture. Anywhere we go, people know what marriage is and we’re so excited to be a part of it.”

NYT quotes Sinjoyla saying,

“This is a dream come true,” said Sinjoyla Townsend, 41, as she smiled ear to ear and held up her ticket indicating she was first in line with her partner of 12 years, Angelisa Young, 47. “We wanted it so bad.”

And here they are with Gwen Migita and Cuc Vuc, who were third in line.

What celebration of love and family would be complete without the Phelps Klan?  Aren’t they our mascots now, in a perverse way?  They illustrate so beautifully what we’ve turned our backs on: fear, hatred, divisiveness.  Well, they didn’t disappoint this morning.  And neither did the real people of faith in attendance.  Could I possibly love the DC clergy any more?

While most people have been celebrating today’s historic step for equal marriage in DC, the folks from Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church showed up spewing their usual venom.

Thankfully, our side has a large group of supportive clergy who were on hand and determined not to let the protesters steal the moment.  In a heartwarming display of solidarity with the LGBT community, they joined together in singing “This Little Light of Mine” to drown out the hate coming from the other side.