The Waltham couple purchased their first home together in 1993. They had to retain a lawyer and set up legal contracts to ensure that one would inherit the property if the other died - something that happens automatically for married couples.
Then on June 27, 2004 - nine years after they gathered with friends and family for a civil ceremony - Johnson and Repp became a legally recognized married couple with a wedding at First Parish Church in Watertown.
"For the first time - and I didn't even realize this - I felt equal," said Repp.
Repp, 52, and Johnson, 48, talked candidly over coffee yesterday morning about three years of legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts. Complete with a white picket fence and golden retriever named Stella, their Waltham home was that of any settled couple in suburbia.
After 19 years together, the couple has had their share of "betters and worses" as Johnson put it. As soon as the June 14 constitutional convention, legislators could be voting on whether to place a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the November 2008 ballot. If it gets the required 50 votes from the Legislature, voters could potentially stop future same-sex marriages.
Both men feel uncomfortable with the public deciding whether other committed gay couples should be given the same rights and recognition as their heterosexual counterparts.
"We're property owners, we take good care of our property, we help our neighbors, we pay our taxes to support public schools - even though we don't have children we feel an obligation to future generations," said Johnson. "We are generous to charities and we volunteer in our communities. It's interesting how everything gets focused on sex."
But Brian Camenker, president of the Waltham-based anti-gay marriage group Mass. Resistance, says marriages like Johnson and Repp's will never be truly proper.
"You can have all the court decisions you want - you can't repeal the laws of nature," Camenker said.
Camenker formed the organization Article 8 Alliance to remove court justices who support gay marriage in the wake of the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision.
Camenker, who went to school in the South during racial desegregation, says the majority of American people are "naturally abhorrent" to homosexual relationships. Same-sex parents are harmful to children who grow up without one male and one female role model in the household, he said.
"Men pretending that they're women is still as ludicrous as it always was," said Camenker who laughed as he described same-sex marriage certificates which read "Party A" and "Party B" instead of the couples' names.
Because he does not accept gay marriages over the last three years as valid, Camenker said having the option to ban future gay marriages would "do more harm than good."
"It acknowledges current gay marriages exist," he said.
In their wedding program, Johnson and Repp printed excerpts from Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall's majority opinion, which held "banning same sex couples from the right to marry is contrary to the Massachusetts Constitution."
The opinion evokes a time when interracial marriage was illegal: "As (those cases made) clear, the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice."
Camenker said interracial marriage and gay marriage are not the same thing, noting "the races mixing was not innately unnatural."
Repp said he often engages in discussion with people who oppose his lifestyle. The argument that scares him is that gay marriage is not a civil rights issue because "being gay is a choice."
"You follow that argument further and it tells you we can take away people's rights because of the choices they make," Repp said, adding that he had no choice in being gay.
Sen. Susan Fargo and state Reps. Thomas M. Stanley and Peter J. Koutoujian, both D-Waltham, all said they would vote down putting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the ballot.
"I oppose amending the constitution. This would be the very first time in history that we've amended the constitution to restrict rights instead of to expand rights," Koutoujian said, adding that his district also asked him to vote against the amendment by a 2-1 margin.
Beth and Isabel Tappan-deFrees already had a 5-year-old son together when they were legally married three years ago.
Now a second-grader at Plympton Elementary School, Elijah, is used to schoolmates asking questions about his family.
"People just wanted to understand what Elijah's family was like," Beth Tappan-deFrees said.
Teachers and parents have been supportive, Beth Tappan-deFrees said.
Tappan-deFrees stressed that not every child has one mother and one father, with some of Elijah's own classmates coming from nontraditional families. She said the kids are curious and remembers explaining the situation to one boy who looked up and said, "Oh, I would love to have two mommies!"
"A child must have a nurturing home, that is absolutely the most important thing in the whole world," she said.
Margie and Meredith Apfelbaum met 10 years ago at a Friday night Sabbath service. The couple had been planning a civil commitment ceremony when gay marriage was legalized.
Meredith Apfelbaum, a New York native, said her family was far more upset about her becoming a Red Sox fan than they were when she married a woman. The Waltham couple said marriage for them was not about "a benefits package."
"It was about acknowledgement," Meredith Apfelbaum said.
Margie Apfelbaum, whose father was a member of the Jewish clergy at the synagogue in which she was married, said same-sex marriage strengthens rather than takes away from the ideal of strong families.
"Allowing people who have already created families to acknowledge them is 'pro-family,' " she said.
Nicole Haley can be reached at nhaley@cnc.com or 781-398-8004.
