Three endearing documentaries investigate the history of the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality: from a gay couple who has been together for 54 years; to the work of Byron Rushing and other straight allies, to how a group of East Bay LGBT activists created the concept of “domestic partnership”.

The Devotion Project: More than Ever dir Antony Osso 2011 USA 10 min

Meet John and Bill, a couple who beat the odds through the decades in order to live an incredible 54-year love story. Their story of devotion is an inspiration to anyone wondering how to make love last.

Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness dir Thomas Allen Harris 2011 USA 17 min

A truly inspiring doc project about same-sex marriage from an African American perspective, the film focuses on Massachusetts State Representative and Civil Rights Movement veteran Byron Rushing, who together with a group of progressive Black clergy and activists, took the campaign for same-sex marriage into the Black community, confronting the hostility of the church and finding important straight allies.

Citizen Change dir James Chambers 2012 USA 48 min

Change is constant, but incremental. Citizen Change reveals how a dedicated group of LGBT pioneers from San Francisco’s East Bay blazed the trail for marriage equality by inventing the concept of “domestic partnership” and attaining its first-ever enactment into law in the city of Berkeley, CA in 1984. These remarkable activists’ stories create a vivid portrait of how a small, dedicated group tackled the seeming-impossible in the ’80s: the attainment of the world's first law that affirmatively recognized same-sex relationships.

— KEVIN SCHAUB