In tribute to National Freedom to Marry Day, and perhaps Valentine’s Day as well, same-sex couples across the nation applied for marriage licenses and domestic partnerships last weekend.
But none made as lasting an impression as the thousands who were married in San Francisco with the permission of Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Fifty same-sex couples registered for domestic partnerships in Minneapolis and several others in New Jersey. Activists in Texas and Virginia applied for marriage licenses but were denied as expected. But in San Francisco, under the approval of the mayor and through sheer civil disobedience, more than 2,300 couples participated in quick weddings to fit in as many couples as possible before courts could stop them. Some traveled through the night and waited at city hall from early as 4 a.m. to get hitched.
Same-sex marriages are banned in California under Proposition 22. But Newsom ignored the law and began issuing marriage licenses last week as the Massachusetts Legislature debated amendments to ban gay marriages in the commonwealth.
“I’m not interested as a mayor in moving forward with a separate but unequal process for people to engage in marriages,” Newsom said in an interview Friday on “Good Morning America.”
Massachusetts state Rep. Philip Travis (D-Rehoboth), who proposed the original amendment to ban gay marriage in the Massachusetts constitution, said he did not approve of the marriages in San Francisco. He said it was up to California’s governor and attorney general to take action.
“What California has to do is up to California and the people of California according to their state laws,” Travis said.
But many across the country, including the Unitarian Universalist church, have praised efforts in California and Massachusetts to allow gays to marry.
“We believe in the inherent and intrinsic worth of all persons,” said Toby Meyer, executive director the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco. Meyer said co-ministers Margot Campbell-Gross and John Marsh performed some of the weddings at their church and at city hall, but the majority of the ceremonies were strictly secular and conducted at city hall. He said his church probably married about four couples total.
While Unitarian Universalists have performed sanctioned gay marriages as religious ceremonies without legal status for decades, last weekend was the first time they were formally recognized as legal unions, Meyer said. The county Superior Court in San Francisco decided to postpone ruling on whether to nullify the same-sex marriages until today, Campbell-Gross said.
“I signed my first marriage license in seven years on Sunday morning and I was in tears doing so,” Campbell-Gross said. She described the experience as “amazing.”
To protest the ban on same-sex marriages, Campbell-Gross stopped signing heterosexual marriage licenses seven years ago. She said she could not sign any marriage into law until gay marriage was legalized.
Campbell-Gross took issue with critics of gay marriage who say it lessens the institution of “traditional marriage” and said she felt her marriage to her husband has been enhanced by the fact that gay couples are able to marry now.
On the other side of the country, Massachusetts Unitarian Universalist churches are preparing for a similar burst of same-sex marriages come May 17, when the Supreme Judicial Court decision that allowed gay marriages in the state will take effect.
Rev. David Olson of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Boston said the church already has a wedding planned for June 5. He said he is currently talking with three other gay couples who have inquired about getting married over the summer.
Olson said that other Unitarian Universalist churches in the area – including the Arlington Street and Trinity Churches – have several gay weddings scheduled for the summer. Janet Hayes, a spokeswoman for the national Unitarian Universalist Association, estimated that the city of Boston has already received up to 50 requests.
“Any progress toward the legalization of same-gender marriages we support,” Hayes said of the symbolic marriages in San Francisco.