That means you still can’t have a legal gay wedding in Oregon, but you can step over the border to Washington to get the job done and then step back again, truly as hitched as hitched can be. It’s pretty tortured legal logic, the couple pointed out: the kind of tail-chasing that once inspired a Charles Dickens character to label the law “a ass.”

“We just think it’s crazy that we have to go to the state of Washington and legally get married, and now Oregon will recognize that marriage. And yet, gay Oregonians cannot get married in their own churches and have that recognized by the state. That is some bizarre law,” McPartland said.

Bizarre or just businesslike, the new legal loophole amounts to a bistate bridge that’s carrying loads of same-sex couples across the border from hoping to hitched. Clark County marriage license applications jumped by nearly 50 percent in the 12 business days after Oregon’s Oct. 18 legal decision, according to a hand count by The Columbian. Two-thirds of all licenses after that day were for same-sex couples and 90 percent of those were from out of state — the vast majority from Oregon.

Many of those couples, like Edwards and McPartland, eventually tie the knot at a church that’s made a name for itself as a same-sex wedding destination: the First Congregational United Church of Christ on Northeast 68th Street.

‘Let’s do it in Vancouver’

The moment the Oregon decision went public, church administrator Kate Woolley started fielding a steady stream of calls from same-sex Oregon couples. For the past few weeks, Woolley said, she’s been taking wedding bookings for nothing but same-sex, out-of-state couples.