There are three videos, each about 10 minutes in length. The first opens with an interview Wicker conducted with the church's pastor about the controversy over whether or not the church was performing illegal marriages -- as opposed to protected religious ceremonies -- and thus violating the law. The rest of it consists mainly of a Gay Activists Alliance planning meeting for the action, with a lengthy speech by Mark Rubin, who lays out the protest's agenda and describes himself as anxious to do what he's about to do in even giving the speech to the membership. But he's also very certain of the morality of his cause.

"Any point of view which is opposed to gay rights is a wrong point of view, categorically, by fiat and word of God," Rubin says.

The whole affair has a very 1970s feel to it, as one might expect. But it also serves as a reminder of the extent to which early gay activists were cultural radicals, because only radicals would have done what they did or dared to stand up at that moment in history. That's important to bear in mind as the cultural history of the gay-marriage fight is written -- gay marriage was not an idea gay conservatives invented in the 1980s and 1990s, though men like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch have done extraordinary work since then within conservative circles to build, if not a bipartisan constituency for legalizing same-sex marriage, at least some highly visible bipartisan support for it. But gay marriage was always on the agenda, from the very beginning of the post-Stonewall gay-rights movement, when gays were still criminals under the law in many states and designated by the psychiatric profession as suffering from a mental disorder. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973 -- the same year Maryland enacted the first state ban on same-sex marriage in response to the new agitation.

A real movement for gay marriage could only became possible once other legal and cultural battles were won. A 1971 gay marriage test case lost every appeal it went through until the Supreme Court declined to hear it in 1972, citing a lack of a "substantial federal question." In the 1980s, AIDS became the focus of the gay community's activism. And the state laws criminalizing gay sex were not struck down, finally and by the Supreme Court, until 2003; that same year, it's worth noting, Evan Wolfson started his Freedom to Marry group. For cultural and strategic reasons, the early gay-rights movement made its priority changing other widely held anti-gay views and laws -- including the right to serve openly in the military, which became a major issue as early as 1975, when decorated Vietnam veteran Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of Time for his lawsuit against the military ban.

"This is not an issue at this particular time that we want to be arrested for," Rubin says in the 1971 planning meeting video. "If the cops come ... if we can't talk them into letting us stay longer, we'll leave with some gay power chants and we'll take our cake back here."

The second video shows the shouting-and-chanting phase of the action, as the GAA members invade the office, set up their coffee urns, and offer the staff cake.