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On Thursday, February 12, 2004, San Francisco's City Hall started issuing marriage licenses to same-gender couples, by orders of Mayor Gavin Newsom. Our friend Paul e-mailed and called us to let us know, and as soon as we were able to get in touch with each other (and as soon as Serafina finished napping) we agreed to meet at Van Ness and Market Streets and go to City Hall. The first wedding had been at 11:06am between activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who have been together 51 years. After that, the news spread like wildfire. As we were walking up Van Ness Street around 2:30pm, someone yelled out from his car, "Hey, are you guys getting married?" It was our friend Nathan, who works for our State Assemblyman Mark Leno in Sacramento. He was just driving into town to join the celebration. Also on our way I called our friend Benson who works downtown, and he met us at City Hall. Nathan and Benson signed on as witnesses to our wedding.
The city clerk's office and the hallways outside were filled with same-sex couples applying for marriage licenses. We filled out the paperwork and took a number, waited 45 minutes or so, and then paid our $83 and were issued a typed marriage license, along with the booklet "Your life together" with a bride and groom on the cover. Until that point I felt a great degree of urgency, since we expected someone to file an injunction to force the city to stop issuing the licenses. We found out later that becaus of Lincoln's Birthday, it was a court holiday, so nothing could be done until Friday (maybe even Tuesday?) I was in such a hurry to leave our apartment that I couldn't find our camera, but luckily we ran into Jon from our synagogue who took photos with his camera and e-mailed them to us. These first two are from Benson's phone-camera:
We went out into the grand rotunda of City Hall to find Mark Leno, whom we'd seen officiating at ceremonies when we came in. He and several other people were performing weddings all up and down the huge staircase, with lots of media and onlookers watching, and cheers erupting each time a ceremony was completed. We waited our turn for Mark to perform our wedding (after he finished a few brief on-camera interviews.)
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Mark Leno is a member of our synagogue, and we've met him on several occasions, plus he's one of our biggest advocates in Sacramento, so it was great having him perform our wedding. We held Serafina together as he read his formal statements about the meaning of this committment.
I was surprised to find tears welling up in my eyes. We'd already committed to spending our lives together and called it a wedding, but this was actually a legal wedding! We took off our wedding rings, gave them (and Serafina) to Benson and Nathan to hold, and then put rings on each other's fingers once again.
Mark pronounced us "spouses for life" and we kissed and hugged as a crowd of onlookers cheered!
We dashed over to the Recorder's office to turn in our signed documents, and by 4:30 we were issued our official Marriage Certificate! Then we went back to the rotunda and did an interview for a television station, and headed out with Benson to Citizen Cake for a mini wedding cake. We ran into 3 lesbian couples there who'd also just gotten married! During the walk we called our parents to tell them the good news!
What an exhilerating afternoon! It's now 12:15 Friday and I'm still excited, and I hear City Hall is still issuing the licences and performing the ceremonies. Apparently the courts won't be able to stop them until Tuesday. And according to an article on SFGate.com (the Chronicle online) today, "City Hall planned to remain open for more marriages Saturday in observance of Valentine's Day." Who could oppose such love and joy?
It's now Monday morning, 2/16 as I update this page with the better photos from Jon. According to today's Chronicle, the city has issued about 1700 marriage licenses since Thursday, and hundreds of people were camped outside of City Hall last night in the rain to make sure to get married today. People have been coming from all over the country to get married, and many have been turned away. Volunteers are helping process the weddings that have been happening all through the weekend. Tomorrow the court will rule on the legal challenges, and decide whether or not to void the over 2000 weddings that will have been performed by that time.