I don’t like the word jaded, because it has too harsh of an edge to it, but when you are a reporter and editor, you do develop a thick skin. You have to. You can’t do this job well without a healthy dose of skepticism. Questioning and challenging everything that anyone tells you is at the heart of this profession.

We’re trained to be non-emotional about things. To look at news and events objectively, sometimes even coldly. Not getting involved is the hallmark of what we do.

One of the things you constantly hear as a journalist is how "historic" something is. The word buzzes about a journalist more than flies at a picnic. It’s annoying, and it’s gotten to the point that any time someone approaches me with a pitch for a story and starts off by telling me that whatever he or she wants me to cover is "historic," I roll my eyes. I may even tune out altogether.

It’s been impossible to tune out the story about gays and lesbians fighting for equal marriage rights. It’s been headline news all around the country for months—including in this publication—ever since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled last November that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the Massachusetts Constitution.

In the long waiting period between the court ruling and this past May 17—when marriage licenses finally began being issued—there’s been an overwhelming amount of news about "gay marriage."

San Francisco even upstaged Massachusetts when its defiant mayor began issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples despite California state law that prohibits gay unions. Thousands of couples showed up to tie the knot there, before the practice was halted by the courts.

In tiny New Paltz, New York, the young, straight mayor there took a similar stand, and boldly officiated at same-sex weddings, until he was threatened with legal action unless he stopped.

And in Portland, Oregon, officials noted there was nothing in state law to prohibit them from handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples, so they began doing so. They, too, continued until a legal challenge forced them to stop, while the issue is being settled in court.

Each time I read about these acts of civil disobedience, I cheered on both the straight officials acting as agents of change, and the gay and lesbian couples willing to stand up and put their relationships on the political line.

I think it’s been an excellent exercise in civil justice, for us as gay and lesbian people, and for the millions of straight Americans who have now seen on their TV screens and in their newspaper pages important images of committed gay and lesbian couples exchanging vows and pledging to love one another—just as heterosexual couples have done forever.

But I have to admit, even as a supporter of same-sex marriage rights, in the past few months I’ve gotten a little saturated with "gay marriage" news.

Every day, it seemed, there was something else happening on the same-sex marriage front: A handful of gay and lesbian couples filing a new lawsuit in yet another state (including two here in Florida); gay and lesbian couples showing up at clerks offices, applying for marriage licenses, even though they knew they’d be rejected; legislators proposing that their states add a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, even though most of those same states already have a law prohibiting them; the president promoting a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriage anywhere in the United States; angry religious zealots waving signs and screaming that gays and lesbians who try to get married are going to hell; and the endless line of politicians declaring where they stand on homosexual weddings.

All of this is important stuff, of course, and stuff that I’ve edited and reported and commented on dutifully.

But I couldn’t help getting a little bored of every story about another gay couple showing up to fill out a marriage application, only to be rejected, as expected. Or of another right-winger proclaiming the end of civilization, or of that annoying Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, struggling day in and day out to find some sort of loophole that would stop marriage in Massachusetts.

Of course, the marriage advocates within the gay and lesbian community kept hitting up us journalists to continue coverage of every burp and sigh along the way because it was all—you guessed it—"historic."

Late on the evening of Sunday, May 16, I checked my e-mail, and found one with the subject line "Countdown at 3 minutes!" referring to the fact that, when the e-mail was sent, it was three minutes before midnight, and thus three minutes before the date that gays and lesbians could get totally legal marriage licenses in Massachusetts.

I confess that when I read the subject line, I rolled my eyes.

Intellectually, I recognized how important May 17 would be. But with six months of overload, and all the hype and build up to it, I wasn’t sure I could get as psyched as the friend who sent me that three-minute e-mail.

Then May 17 came. I watched as people like Marcia Hams, 56, and her partner of 27 years, Susan Shepherd, 52, became the first same-sex couple to tie the knot in Massachusetts, and then cut a huge three-tiered wedding cake at Cambridge, Massachusetts City Hall.

Later in the day, scores of men and women walked out of city halls all around Massachusetts, triumphantly waving their marriage licenses in their hands, and showing off gold wedding bands.

Some were laughing, some were crying, but they were all euphoric. This huge political and legal and religious debate had suddenly, once again, turned deeply personal for these people, and for all of us who are gay and lesbian, whether we are in Massachusetts getting married, or just marveling from afar.

I looked at those images of gay and lesbian people clutching onto their wedding licenses, and to each other, and I instantly knew one incontrovertible truth: What we were all witnessing was historic.