Holding hands and standing on the steps of the courthouse in Tampa, Florida, on July 20, Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether didn’t make a frightening picture. Indeed, they made a loving one.

But these two women standing together publicly and showing affection for each other after 27 years as a couple is exactly what political and social conservatives, and particularly the religious right, have been dreading and warning the rest of the nation about ever since Massachusetts’ highest court ruled that gay and lesbian couples had a right to wed in that state.

Wilson and Schoenwether traveled to Massachusetts earlier in the month, and on July 2, the women wed in Provincetown. Now, they are trying to export their love to other states.

The reason the couple stood together on the Tampa courthouse was to announce that in the little red folder carried by their attorney, Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin, was a lawsuit challenging the federal government to make other states recognize their Massachusetts marriage. They are the first gay or lesbian couple in the country to file such a lawsuit.

Legal experts, including those working for gay and lesbian organizations that are trying to legalize same-sex marriage in places beyond just Massachusetts, say the lawsuit does not have a strong chance. Some gay and lesbian advocates have even been very critical of the lawsuit. They are worried that if it fails, it might actually hurt rather than help the advancement of securing same-sex marriage rights.

Wilson and Schoenwether know they face an uphill battle.

"We know this could be a long uphill battle and that this might not be the lawsuit that breaks everything wide open," Schoenwether told the St. Petersburg Times. "But we also believe we should do what we can, that we have an obligation to at least try."

"No one has anything to be afraid of by recognizing our marriage," Wilson said that day as the two women stood side by side, beaming.

As much as I hope these two women win their long-shot lawsuit, and as much as I want same-sex marriage to be legalized in ever state, I must respectfully disagree with Wilson.

Those who are so viciously and vehemently opposed to gay and lesbian marriage have a lot to fear from people like Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether, and our foes know it.

In many ways, Wilson and Schoenwether are the lesbian version of an Ozzie and Harriet marriage.

For starters, the two met in church.

It was the late 1970s, and Schoenwether was teaching school in Detroit, Michigan. At the time, she was very closeted. She was scared to death that school officials would discover her sexual orientation, and she would lose her job. If her mother found out she was a lesbian, Schoenwether fretted, her mother might disown her.

On the advice of a friend, Schoenwether, who didn’t feel welcomed as a lesbian in most straight churches of the day, made a visit to the Metropolitan Community Church, which caters to gay and lesbian Christians.

There, she met Nancy Wilson, a New York native who had moved in 1975 to Detroit from Boston to be the pastor of MCC.

Schoenwether says she still remembers asking Wilson out. Almost three decades later, the two women are still together—a feat for any couple, regardless of their sexual orientation.

In those nearly three decades, the two women have shared a life of good times and bad, of struggles and achievements, of hopes and disappointments and successes.

Not long after the two women started seeing each other, rumors began circulating at the Detroit school where Schoenwether taught that she was a lesbian. She suffered ridicule from the students. In the teachers’ lounge, her coworkers would whisper about her.

Then, in 1979, the two women moved to Los Angeles, where Wilson became the clerk of the Board of Elders for MCC. Later, she would become the pastor there.

Schoenwether went back to school, getting a master’s and a doctorate in clinical psychology. She opened a practice where she specialized in counseling gay and lesbian couples.

In Los Angeles, life changed dramatically for the two women, especially Schoenwether. No longer closeted, she took up gay and lesbian activism, a charge that still has hold of her a little, and probably has influence on her decision to file this lawsuit.

Three years ago, the couple moved again, this time settling in Bradenton, Florida. Wilson is still with MCC, now the senior pastor at Trinity MCC in Sarasota. Schoenwether has given up her counseling career, and traded it in for a camera. She now works as a photographer.

Along their path together, through moves and coming out and job changes and parents dying, the two women, like any committed couple, have stood by each other as solidly and surely as they stood hand-in-hand on the courthouse steps in Tampa.

You can’t see all the details of their history when you look at them, or when you see photographs of them in the papers.

But what you see is the kind of quiet strength and dignity that comes when two people have spent their lives loving one another. I saw it when I looked at the pictures of these two women daring to stand up against the federal government and Congress and the hateful lawmakers in so many states who would deny everything they stand for and have meant to each other.

I’m guessing that others saw it, too. Including members of the religious right and the politicians who make their careers out of scaring straight people with the thought that a gay marriage somehow threatens them.

I suspect plenty of straight people saw it, as well; people who may or may not be in favor of letting gays and lesbians marry, but people who are married themselves, who have also been through job changes and moves and parental loss, and all the other things that life throws at two people who stick together for three decades of love and commitment. I’m betting that even the straight fence-sitters on gay marriage saw something of themselves reflected in the strong and determined faces of these two women that day as they stood holding hands on the Tampa courthouse steps.

No wonder Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether scare so many opponents of same-sex marriage.