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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
In San Francisco, one bride wore white and the other wore blue.
Feb 14, 2004 | When Salon profiled Toby and Jean Adams last fall, they had just been married by a minister in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a small, quiet revolution: They went home to small-town Auburn, Calif., and began the process living life openly as a married same-sex couple in a community where traditional heartland values are still taken for granted. Daring -- and remarkable -- as that was, neither bride expected that by Valentine's Day 2004 they would be legally married, with their union not only blessed by a minister but sanctioned by the courts too.
On Friday, they drove almost three hours in the early morning from Auburn to San Francisco, found a public bathroom, put on their wedding dresses for a second time, and became the 66th couple to make history that morning at the city's elegant City Hall. One day after newly elected San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom defied California law by ordering the county clerk to accept marriage license applications from gay and lesbian couples, Toby and Jean are among the first legally married same-sex couples in the nation.
For now, anyway.
Already, two local groups have asked the state courts to void the new marriages and issue an injunction against new licenses. And as Massachusetts lawmakers debate a measure that would limit same-sex couples to civil union rights, and President George W. Bush inches closer to public support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the issue is poised to be a volatile, potentially divisive factor this election year.
But if the reactions of Toby, 39, and Jean, 30, are any indication, the joy among the newly legally wed on Friday far outweighed any doubt or apprehension. "Oh my God, it's so wonderful!" Toby exclaimed an hour after the civil ceremony. "I didn't think I was going to be this excited."
How were they going to celebrate? With their 3-year-old daughter Kalen, they'll head to the state capitol in Sacramento, where they're scheduled to speak Saturday at a rally in favor of same-sex marriage rights. Salon reached them by phone Friday as they were taking one of their witnesses back to work; they were at a cafe, ordering lunch and still in their wedding dresses.
Congratulations! What does it feel like to be legally married?
Toby: Thank you so much. Oh my God, it's so wonderful! I mean, I didn't think I was going to be this excited because we already got married back in July in our hearts, but it's really important and it just feels so -- we're really, really married! It was a total surprise to me yesterday -- we got the e-mail at 11:30 in the morning Thursday, about 20 minutes after the first couple were married. I guess we could have gotten in the car and driven there, but it took it the rest of the day to see if we could get a priest. I'm very excited. I wasn't entirely convinced we were going to get there in time and get through the line, but yeah, we're officially, legally married.
Jean: I'm really happy about it. It was a wonderful experience to see everyone down there.
So tell me about this morning.
Toby: We got up at 4 in the morning -- we left about 5 and got to City Hall about 7:45, where friends were already holding a spot for us in line. We had friends there to be our witnesses, people who were part of our wedding. The person who performed our ceremony in July was there; she was the one who signed our marriage certificate. For us it was important to have that continuity between the religious ceremony and the civil ceremony. People were very excited in line, everybody was clapping as people came out with their licenses. The line for the licenses was really long, once you had the license you could do the ceremony right there. They were letting people do the ceremony for free. They had people legally authorized to do marriages there, but we didn't have to wait in that line. The witnesses signed, the minister signed, and we were married.
It was a long line. We were couple No. 66 of the morning and that was at 9:45 a.m. There were at least that many couples behind us in line. They'll do hundreds today. And the people at City Hall were wonderful. They were really nice, they were really organized, they were coming and leading you, basically coming and saying, "OK, this is where you go next." The licenses read "first applicant," "second applicant," by the way.
There was one protester. One guy. And he was spouting off about, "If you cared about the children you wouldn't do this!" And we were laughing, because he was saying this to our friends who had been chasing our daughter around for us all morning. We're like, Believe us, we care about the children! Our daughter deserves to have parents who are married.
Jean: And there were a ton of kids there, the children of the couples who were getting married.
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