On July 15th, 2008 Aric and I were finally legally married. We chose the day because it coincided with the day we met in 1994. We have been on a long tangled road toward getting married. We had been domestically partnered in San Francisco in the late 90's. This was actually quite a big deal since it meant that I wouldn't be a stranger in the eyes of the law if Aric were to get sick which was a pretty big worry. I knew that his family wouldn't be shitty, but shittiness doesn't have to come from family with the fucked way governments and other institutions can screw over gay people in relationships too. We didn't do anything special as I recall which shows on its face that DP is in no way equivalent to marriage. It's just a legal contract. That's true of marriage as well, of course, but there is a lot of cultural significance to marriage too.
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| At Stowe for our Civil Union |
Vermont legalized civil unions in March of 2000. After thinking about it for a while we decided to take vacation to the Northeast to do some leaf peeping in 2002. We drove up from Boston through New Hampshire and then over to Stowe Vermont where we stayed at a cute B&B that I can't remember the name of. Civil Unions were basically marriage without the title marriage. So for that we did have a small ceremony with a local justice of the peace and the proprietors. It was a great all around trip where we got to see our leaves, stopped over in Amherst, MA to visit with our friend Jagu and finally down to NYC.
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| Great pic of Aric at Stowe |
We had dinner at the Union Square Cafe where I first had their fabulous lamp chops "scotta ditta" which translates to "burn your fingers". Our friend Doron took us to see Hairspray on Broadway with Harvey Fierstein as the Divine character. One crazy anecdote was that I'm pretty sure this was the trip we ended up at this leather bar on the west side called The Anvil (?). Aric had taken some pills earlier and they were exploding in his stomach. There were a lot of people smoking cigars so this made a perfect storm for his stomach and he needed to puke. Bad. There was a mile long line of leather queens waiting to piss and Aric went by all of them to their scowls. He daintily went to the sink, barfed, rinsed his mouth and sink and walked out. The leather queens were impressed and clapped.
Fast forward to February 12th, 2004. That evening Mayor Gavin Newsom, in reaction to George Bush's call for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, married Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin who had founded the first lesbian group, The Daughters of Bilitis. The catch was that this wasn't one off. They were allowing anybody to get married. By the next morning the internet was buzzing as well as the whole city. At about 7am I woke Aric up with my proposal: "you can sleep all morning or get your sorry ass out of bed and get married". We quickly got dressed and headed down to City Hall. There was a line snaking around the building of couples getting licenses and an impromptu set of people doing ceremonies on the veranda and elsewhere. Every time a couple said their "I do's", a huge ovation would go up to announce the fact. As Aric and I were getting closer to the office, the national media was all over this story. We saw CNN and a bunch of others when Jean Elle of NBC asked Aric if they could tag along with the process. Sure we said, and she interviewed us along the way. We got our license and headed up to the veranda and were married.
The video went viral and was the face of gay marriage on NBC for years after. We heard from friends and relatives as far away as Oslo and Sao Paulo. Marriages kept happening for about a week or two until a suit was filed and marriages were halted. The state Supreme Court soon after invalidated all of the licenses but invited the defendants that this may well be worth reviewing. The lawsuits materialized in the form of "Re: Marriage Cases". The original ruling was in our favor but was overturned on appeal. The California Supreme Court heard the final appeal and ruled in our favor in May of 2008.
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| Getting Married on our Patio |
So it was legal in California. There was a dark cloud hovering over all of this in that there was a proposition being circulated for the November ballot. They had stupidly (from their standpoint) not made the proposition language retroactive. This caused a mad rush of couples hurriedly planning and executing their weddings on very short notice. We were no different. We decided to do ours at our house which has been the scene of countless parties over the years. We planned out all of the food and drink and in the spirit of all of the giving over the years asked some of our friends if they'd be willing to help out in the kitchen and serving. It was totally fitting for a Casa Sanchez party as we called it.
We had one glitch in that our State Senator, Mark Leno, was supposed to officiate it but got stuck in Sacramento. Our friend Derik filled in to take our vows instead. We were so new to this that we had completely forgot to think about what our vows should be or having a best man and that sort of thing. So when Derik read our vows in the standard issue form, I knew that he'd get to the hated "forsake all others" part. It was a pregnant pause by I decided not to be a drama queen and rationalized it away. The party was a huge success with two different shifts for the reception and lots of wine and food to go around. I was forbade to go into the kitchen or have any part of running the party which our friends loved.
So it was finally legal and done. Sure enough Prop H8 passed stopping people from getting married. The California Supreme Court had no jurisdiction so ultimately it was sued in federal court. After putting on an utterly awful case where the defendants couldn't find anybody who would testify for them and one of their expert witnesses admitting that nobody was harmed in court, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled for the plaintiffs. It was put on stay pending appeal which went to the 9th Circuit and then to the Supreme Court where on 5-4 decision court ruled that the plaintiffs of the appeal didn't have standing, dodging the underlying case.
Marriage was legal in California again but while all of our drama was going on, another cases was winding its way through the courts: Obergefell. By then it was practically once a month that another state would legalize marriage which made for high drama each time there was a decision or a vote. The big prize though made it to the Supreme Court. Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority and did not dodge and considered the particulars of the actual case. On June 26th, 2015 gay marriage was legal throughout the US.
It was a very long journey to get gay marriage starting all the way back in the 70's when a case made it to the Supreme Court (Baker) and was pretty much laughed out. Lots of people back in the 80's and 90's thought that marriage should be the last of our priorities, but I always felt different. First of all with AIDS there were absolute horror stories about shitty families, so the harm was real and acute. But the real thing for me was because it was also symbolic. It was utterly and completely important to Homophobia Inc and I always though that if we won marriage, it would break their back. I've been pretty much vindicated on that front. Yes there has been some sniping around the edges but the great culture war on gay people is for the most part dead here in the US.
In conclusion I'll quote from Anthony Kennedy's decision:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
