Pictured Thousands lined up for marriages in San Francisco. Photo by Daniel Nicoletta.
Wedding bells will continue to ring for gays and lesbians in San Francisco, at least until the next court date, set for March 16. More than 3,000 couples have tied the knot since City Hall began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Feb. 12.
The outpouring of happy couples, many with their children, many who waited outside for hours in the rain, has been splashed prominently across the national media. And local outlet across the country have competed to tell the stories of gay and lesbian couples who journeyed to San Francisco to marry for personal and legal reasons.
'I think the parade of couples on TV and in the newspapers and magazines is what is going to change the public attitude about marriage of same-sex couples,' said Jon Davidson, an attorney with Lambda Legal, one of the groups supporting marriage rights for gays. 'That is what is going to take. Before, this was an abstract issue.'
As a sign of normalcy, the county clerk's office ended its marathon walk-in sessions and Feb. 23 began to conduct the ceremonies only through appointments made ahead of time by calling (415) 554-4952 during normal business hours. The fee for the license is $82 and the fee for a ceremony through the clerk's office is $62.
On Feb. 17, two separate state judges rejected pleas by right-wing opponents to issue an immediate injunction to stop the marriages; they set hearing dates for filing additional briefs and continuing the cases.
An injunction is issued only when the party demonstrates both that it is likely to win the case and it will suffer irreparable harm if the action is allowed to continue.
'The courts see that there's no need to stop what's happening in San Francisco right now. Clearly, there's no emergency here, and nobody is being harmed by these marriages,' Davidson said.
On Feb. 19, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera took the offensive, going back to court seeking a declaratory judgment that the state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman violates the California state constitution by discriminating against gays and lesbians.
'I took an oath literally to support the constitution, and that's what I'm doing,' said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. 'The issue here is simple: the state's constitution does not permit discrimination at all, anywhere, period.'
That will be added to the legal mix and all of the lawsuits are likely to be consolidated into a single case. Attorneys for the social conservatives have sought to have Judge James L. Warren removed from the case, though they have not stated why. The jurist, outed in 2002 as being gay, is the grandson of former California Governor and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren.
Mayor Newsom performed his third wedding ceremony on Feb. 20, marrying Carole Migden and Christina Arguedas, her partner of 20 years. Migden has a long history in elective office, having served as a San Francisco Supervisor and represented the city in the state legislature prior to her current position as chair of the powerful State Board of Equalization.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally weighed in on the issue with a dramatic performance timed to the Republican state convention. He denounced the lawlessness of Mayor Newsom in issuing the licenses and passed the buck to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, ordering him 'to take immediate steps to obtain a definitive judicial resolution of this controversy.'
Lockyer, a Democrat, asserted, 'I sort of resent it when Arnold plays Conan the Barbarian to the right wing and directs me to do something. He doesn't have the authority to do that.'
'The governor can direct the Highway Patrol. He can direct the next Terminator 4 movie if he chooses. But he can't direct the attorney general in the way he's attempted to do,' Lockyer said.
Nonetheless, Lockyer declared that he and the Governor were on the same page in believing that the marriages were illegal.
Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Schwarzenegger rejected the need to call in State Police to arrest city officials. Interestingly, he twice refused the opportunity to pledge to veto a bill that would legalize gay marriage, saying, 'I don't deal with hypotheticals.'
Openly gay Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., expressed his own reservations. 'I was sorry to see this thing go forward,' he told the Associated Press. He called it 'a diversion' that promotes the notion that unpopular laws can be broken or ignored. 'If we go forward in Massachusetts and get same-sex marriage on the books, it's going to be binding and incontestable.'
The liberal California Sen. Barbara Boxer, up for reelection, said she opposed changing the law to allow for same-sex marriages.
'I think some of our friends may need a little consciousness-raising,' came the testy reply of San Francisco's openly gay state Assemblyman Mark Leno.
He dismissed talk of a backlash. 'There is no perfect time,' Leno told the Bay City News, 'We're in the midst of a very exciting, major social change in this country.'
Many gay leaders were maddened by Frank's comments. 'Barney, you are becoming even more irrelevant,' trans activist Phyllis Randolph Frye wrote in an email. 'I can just see Ole Barne back on the bus ... with Rosa Parks, saying 'Not now, Rosa, those conservative folks might not like it unless you come back to the back of the bus with me. We might have a backlash. We might have to walk.''
Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson, speaking at Harvard Law School last week, said gay marriage rights are not the same as civil rights.
'The comparison with slavery is a stretch in that some slave masters were gay, in that gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and in that they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote,' he said. One gay activist pointed out that Jackson did not note that many slaves may also have been gay, and many Blacks today are also gay.
Gay.com reported that later that day at another event, while he said he supports the right of gays and lesbians to choose their partners, he added, 'In my culture, marriage is a man-woman relationship.' Jackson himself has been accused of having a child with a woman who is not his wife.
State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson sat next to Jackson during the Harvard speech, and she linked her own discrimination as an African-American to the experience of gays.
And in other news, Massachusetts state Rep. Cheryl Rivera not only came out for gay marriage, she also came out herself Feb. 12. The Democrat told a crowd gathered in support of marriage, 'I don't have to introduce myself ... I'm gay.' But many of her supporters did not know until that declaration that she is in fact a lesbian.
E-mail the San Francisco mayor at: gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
— Also contributing: Tracy Baim
