On an August day just before our wedding, my husband and I went down to San Francisco City Hall to apply for a marriage license. The experience might have been just one more item to cross off the pre-wedding checklist, if not for the handful of same-sex couples also in attendance. As we waited in the County Clerk’s office for our number to be called, we watched couple after couple joyously legalize their relationships under the supportive eyes of family, friends and the state of California.
I could not have felt luckier to witness their history-making unions, or prouder to be a Californian on that day. My commitment to my soon-to-be husband felt all the more meaningful, set as it was within the context of a community that valued all commitments. The spirit of equality and celebration filling City Hall seemed to promise a kinder, brighter future ahead.
Adam and I tied the knot in September. Six months later, as we celebrate our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple, scores of our fellow newlyweds are watching to see if the state will honor their unions. Thousands more would-be-weds are praying for the California Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, the voter initiative that banned their right to marry. The court will hold a hearing reviewing the legality of that initiative as early as March. But in the meantime, there are no gay couples shedding happy tears at City Hall.
This month, we’ve dedicated the magazine in defense of love, in all its many forms. We have stories on eco-friendly weddings and the pleasures and pitfalls of voluntary celibacy. We’ve rounded up lists of the sexiest classes in San Francisco and sought out the city’s best spots for satisfying a sweet tooth. But we knew the issue would not be complete without revisiting what went wrong on November 4th that caused some of us to turn to each other and say, your love is not equal to mine, your heart is not equal to mine, and you do not deserve the rights I deserve.
In this issue, journalist Rachel Dowd sits down for a conversation with gay rights activists Robin Tyler and Diane Olson. Robin and Diane were the first gay couple to marry in LA County, and theirs is one of the many petitions against Prop 8 the Supreme Court will consider this spring. When asked why the right to marry under civil law was so important to them, Diane answered with this: “All I have to say is we’re married and it’s universally understood. It says to the world, this is my person. This is the person I’m going to live the rest of my life with. This is the person I’m committed to financially, legally and spiritually.”
Just this morning, I stood at San Francisco City Hall once again, surrounded by thousands of my friends and neighbors, all of us joyously witnessing our 44th president being sworn in to office in Washington, DC. We listened as Elizabeth Alexander read her inaugural poem, which included the benediction: “What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light.”
I have no doubt the children of the unions I watched that day at City Hall will come of age in a world that has managed to rise to Alexander’s hopes, a world where all love is equally honored. The only question is how soon will each of us take a stand to make it so? We can start today by publicly declaring our support for marriage equality, and by celebrating mighty love, wherever we find it.
— Eliza Sarasohn, Editor in Chief