PROFILE OF MARY BONAUTO: From the New York Times Magazine

...As historic as the Vermont decision was, Bonauto will forever be remembered for her more important victory last November, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in response to a lawsuit she filed on behalf of seven same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses, handed down a landmark decision, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, ending the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from civil marriage in the state. The ramifications of Goodridge have been felt throughout the country: public officials in San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; New York State; and New Jersey were inspired to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples (all such licensing has since been halted), and a political backlash took form, culminating in President George W. Bush's call in late February for a federal constitutional amendment to ''protect marriage,'' as he put it, from ''activist judges and local officials.'' ...

But the marriage question was still very much on her mind. GLAD was inundated with requests from gays and lesbians for help with legal difficulties -- child custody and adoption, health-benefits coverage, inheritance and Social Security survivor benefits -- that would not have existed if same-sex couples enjoyed the legal protections and benefits of marriage. Some of those requests, Bonauto says, are ''seared into my soul'' because they came from ''people who are calling me sobbing from a pay phone because their partner of 24 years has just died and the so-called family is in the house cleaning it out.'' But prudence prevailed. ''I would have loved to have been married myself and would have loved to have filed a marriage case,'' she says, but ''you have to apply your strategic sensibility to it.'' ...

Five months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down the ruling for which Bonauto had been waiting: an unparalleled 4-3 decision ending the exclusion of gay couples from marriage. The moral influence of the Lawrence decision on the Massachusetts court was made explicit at the very beginning of the Goodridge majority opinion, in which Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall cited Lawrence three times in her first three paragraphs. As Matt Coles, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, observes, Goodridge ''answered that question that Lawrence begged.'' And while ''Goodridge is the earthquake,'' Coles says, ''Goodridge is the earthquake because of Lawrence.'' ...

But rather than dwell on state-by-state prognoses, Bonauto and other gay and lesbian litigators privately focus upon delaying any federal court consideration of same-sex marriage issues for a good many years. ...

One immediate challenge Bonauto faces is an attempt by Governor Romney to order local officials to enforce a long-ignored 1913 statute that proscribes the issuance of marriage licenses to out-of-state couples whose marriage would be ''void'' in their home state. Romney wants town clerks to begin demanding proof of residency from marriage applicants, but individual clerks will face the choice of how to apply the state instructions, couple by couple.

That's exactly the context Evan Wolfson wants. After May 17, he predicts, ''for a period of time there will be a patchwork in which couples have this mix of experiences, and in which nongay people, primarily, sitting on the other side of those desks at the bank, at the clerk's office, at the school registrar's, are going to have to now look at a real family and say, 'Am I going to be the one to say they're not married?'''

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