42 years ago, Harry and Bob's wedding rocked the world

As Harry Freeman and Bob Jones walked down the aisle at Old West Church in Boston, former prisoners from the jail down the street served as bouncers at the door.

"They would ask, 'How do you know Harry and Bob,'" Freeman-Jones recalled, sitting on the porch of his Syracuse home.

His wedding to Bob Jones 42 years ago was one of the first gay weddings to be covered by the national and international media. The two were married by a minister in the United Methodist Church in 1973. The event was covered in The Boston Globe under the headline: "Minister marries gays over bishop's objection."

As the Supreme Court considers the question of whether gay marriage is a fundamental human right, Freeman-Jones said he thinks the struggle is far from over. Same-sex marriage is now legal in 37 states; the Supreme Court heard arguments last month in a case that would decide whether same-sex couples are guaranteed the right to marry under the Constitution.

The same arguments that were used to force Freeman-Jones' minister out of the Methodist Church all those years ago are still being made today, he said.

"We were crazy. Sick and immoral. Destined to be confined to hellfire from people who knew nothing about us," Freeman-Jones said.

Bodyguards at Harry Freeman-Jones and Bob Jones' 1973 marrage

Harry Freeman-Jones speaks about his marriage to Bob Jones in an early highly publicized same sex marriage in Boston, 1973.Fireworks

Bob Jones and Harry Freeman met when they were studying theology at Boston University. Freeman-Jones had graduated from Syracuse University with an arts degree and had gone on to BU to become an arts minister. Jones, too, was studying to be a minister.

They were friends who went to the same anti-war rallies and ate lunch at the same table. One day, Jones came out to Freeman-Jones. "He didn't want me to hear it from someone else," Freeman-Jones said.

At the time, Freeman-Jones had never thought he might be gay, himself. He'd dated women, "gotten to a base or two," he said, but never felt the fireworks people talked about. When Jones told him he was gay, he debated whether to continue the friendship. But in the end, he did. His friend took a risk in telling him, so he would take a risk in staying Jones' friend.

It wasn't until a year later that Freeman Jones realized he was in love with a man. He and Jones were canoeing Raquette River in the Adirondacks where Freeman-Jones grew up.

The two were in the middle of nowhere. Freeman-Jones was complaining about everything that was wrong with his life. "And then I said, 'And you know, I'm not seeing anyone. I don't have anyone to be in love with,'" Freeman- Jones said.

Bob Jones' response was, "I'll always love you."

"Then I heard this voice say, 'I love you, too, Bob.' And it was mine,'" Freeman-Jones said. In that moment he realized he was in love and he was gay. He understood the fireworks.

The wedding

The two men were together for about five years before they decided to get married. It began as a joke. Straight friends kept getting married at their church, Old West, in Cambridge. Each time, they'd scrape together enough money to buy a present. As they went through that routine, again, they wondered aloud: Why can't we get married?

On April 7, 1973, they did. Harry and Bob wore suits and packed the church so full that wedding guests overflowed onto the church steps and down the sidewalk. The details from inside were whispered down the line like a game of telephone.

The wedding was a show: A cabaret singer, strings from the New England Conservatory, three progressive jazz groups and the church organ filled the church.

As Freeman-Jones sifts through his memories, there's one that's still crystal clear decades later.

There was a point in the service where the microphone was passed around. A young, straight couple Freeman-Jones had never met stood up together, holding a baby. "They said they came because they believed in marriage, in what it's really about," Freeman-Jones said.

After the couple finished speaking, the entire church filled with clapping.

Like many marriages, gay and straight, Harry and Bob's didn't last. Bob Jones was the kind of guy who built things and moved on. Freeman-Jones takes comfort in putting down roots. The men sought counseling, but after four years decided to split up.

Legally, it wasn't complicated, Freeman-Jones said. Their marriage contract was actually a business agreement that included a prenup. The two men, who moved to Syracuse months after their marriage, sent out invitations for their divorce. They rented a local church and had a ceremony where everyone who came made masks out of tinfoil and wrote something about the couple on a little flag.

Freeman-Jones hung the masks and flags in a stand of birch trees on his family's property in the Adirondacks, near where he first professed his love to Bob Jones.

Jones left Syracuse and moved on. He died a few years ago in England. Freeman-Jones, who kept his ex-husband's name, stayed in Syracuse where he works as an artist and advocate. He also teaches at Syracuse University.

For nearly 40 years, he's been with the same partner, Henry Yokel, but the two men are not married. Their relationship is not the same as his was with Bob. They live together and love each other, but the relationship is open. Another man, with whom Freeman-Jones also has a relationship, lives with them.

Still waiting

For his wedding, Freeman-Jones made a bell tree by hanging brass bells of all sizes and shapes from a wooden pole. Four decades ago, the delicate ringing filled the church at his wedding.

Freeman-Jones, now 68, has used the bell tree in other ceremonies and at marches for social justice in the years since.

On the top of the bell tree is a cross that an antique dealer gave him and his fiance. The dealer told them it was used during the Spanish Inquisition. He hoped using the cross in a gay wedding would redeem it from its history of oppression.

On his porch on Syracuse's West Side, Freeman-Jones shook the bells. The jingles and tinkles mixed with the noise of a chainsaw across the street. The antique metal cross caught the sun.

He is still waiting for the redemption to be complete.

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