While other mayors were watching balls drop at midnight, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake was ringing in the 2013 by giving her constituents a civil right they lacked before midnight: the right to marry. She was among several officiants across the state of Maryland that performed the state's first legal same sex weddings after they became legal.
Maryland legislators and Governor Martin O'Malley (D) legalized same sex marriages in early 2012, but opponents gathered enough signatures to force a referendum in November. Nearly 52 percent of Marylanders signaled their approval, and the state started issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples on December 6, 2012. When the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2013, same sex marriages were officially legal.
Watch video of some of the Maryland couples that made history at midnight, courtesy of WMAR ABC 2 in Baltimore, below:
