It is illegal for gay and lesbian couples to marry in New York, though the state recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. But Nelson used a food stamp card for an ID – it listed the gender as “F” – and wore a dress to City Hall, the New York Post reports.

Nelson is transgendered and Stenson does not identify himself as gay. But as they walked out of City Hall together after the ceremony was performed, Stenson said, “I think we just made history.”

Their marriage might be the first official same-sex marriage in New York State – though it might not stay on the books long.

The City Clerk’s office said that the marriage is not legal and they are considering next steps. The office is now requiring a birth certificate as proof of identification for marrriages.

Evan Wolfson, head of Freedom to Marry, told the Post that this is “one more illustration of why the New York Senate needs to move quickly to pass the marriage bill and end this discrimination in New York.”

Note: OK, readers – I changed the wording a bit. What do you think?

Seattle activist Amy Balliett, founder of web-spawned phenomenon “Join the Impact” realized that the site ‐ at that point, only a two-day old project ‐ had reached a certain critical mass, logging 50,000 hits per hour. The “impact” was crashing servers.

Little did she know how viral this thing would become.

“Join the Impact” began as a blog post and email template by Willow Witte, a friend of Balliett’s who had sent the missive to inspire friends after the passage of California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8.

The success of similar propositions in Arizona and Florida, as well as an anti-gay adoption measure in Arkansas, only added gravity to the situation. Witte encouraged contacts to forward the note to their local LGBT groups to solicit plans of community action. Balliett responded to her friend’s email saying, according to a post on the site, “We shouldn’t wait, we need to mobilize now, and we need to on a national level, at the exact same moment, throughout the country.”

And mobilize they did: this past Friday, Nov. 7, ‘”Join the Impact” hit the web. Five hours later, the site logged 10,000 visitors. Apparently a lot of other people shared the young women’s desire to turn despair into resolve.

By midnight, 20 cities’ worth of young volunteers had signed on to organize protests against the discriminatory propositions.

The next evening, Nov. 8, the site had tripled its hits.

By Monday morning, a plan had emerged: Cities around the country would organize their own efforts to coordinate a synchronized protest for Sat., Nov. 15, 10:30 a.m. PST. The movement became officially global with hits from the UK and France, and by Nov. 11, over one million visitors had come to the site.

Across the country, posts on Craigslist, bulletins on MySpace, and emails on ListServs with titles like “Meet at City Hall next weekend!” and “Upset about Prop 8? Here’s what YOU can do about it,” began to buzz with notice of the upcoming national protest.

NEXT PAGE: Who is Amy Balliett?