Married last June in a Sacramento synagogue before 300 celebrants, Terry and Barbara Allen-Brusher share a last name, jointly pay state income taxes and possess nearly 19 years of memories together….
They felt protected until Election Day, the couple said, when voters passed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that effectively bans future same-sex marriages like the Allen-Brushers’….
On Sunday, in response to the passage of Proposition 8, a new post-election group called Californians Against 8 plans a rally at the state Capitol at 1 p.m….
Read the full story by Susan Ferriss at the Sacramento Bee.
Same-sex couples who have married since June knocked on doors in neighborhoods across the state on Sunday to share stories with the voters they hoped to persuade to defeat Proposition 8.
In recent weeks, other gay opponents of the ban, including a Roman Catholic priest, a former Republican mayor and a small-town newspaper editor, came out of the closet to show how the issue cuts across religious and social lines….
Read the full story by Lisa Leff at the San Jose Mercury News.
Scott Shackford, editor in chief of the Barstow (CA) Desert Dispatch, published an editorial titled “Preserve Independence By Voting Down Proposition 8.” Here is an excerpt:
Today I’m shedding the more impersonal “authoritative” voice of one of my typical editorials: Proposition 8 means something more personal to me. It directly affects my rights. As such, I want to make a more direct appeal to try to convince Barstow residents to vote against Proposition 8….
I come to you now from a position of powerlessness. California’s gay residents will not determine the result of this vote. Much as Visalia — 200 miles away from us — gets to decide who represents us in Sacramento, you get to decide whether I can get married….
Read the entire editorial at the Barstow (CA) Desert Dispatch.
Gay couples from around California and the nation are feverishly tying the knot ahead of Election Day to avoid missing out if voters approve a ballot initiative aimed at banning same-sex marriage….
The urgency intensified last week with news that Proposition 8’s supporters had far outraised its opponents and the measure was gaining support in public opinion polls….
Read the full story at National Public Radio.
For years, Beth Kerrigan tried to talk herself out of being gay….
But over time, acceptance found its way into Kerrigan’s life. She found a soul mate. Her family eventually came around, accepting Kerrigan’s longtime partner, Jody Mock, and their 6-year-old twin boys.
And now, with its historic ruling Friday legalizing same-sex marriage, the state Supreme Court says they can marry….
Read the full story by Alaine Griffin in The Hartford Courant.
Last month, Rachel Bird exchanged vows with Gideon Codding in a church wedding in front of family and friends. As far as Bird is concerned, she is a bride.
To the state of California, however, she is either “Party A” or “Party B.”
Those are the terms that have replaced “bride” and “groom” on the state’s new gender-neutral marriage licenses. And to Bird and Codding, that is unacceptable….
Bird and Codding have refused to complete the new forms, a stand that has already cost them. Because their marriage is not registered with the state, Bird cannot sign up for Codding’s medical benefits or legally take his name. They are now exploring their options, she said.
Bird’s father, Doug Bird, pastor of Roseville’s Abundant Life Fellowship, said he is urging couples not to sign the new marriage forms, and that he is getting some support from congregants and colleagues at local churches….
Read the full story by Jennifer Garza in the Sacramento Bee.
Actor George Takei (Heroes, Star Trek, The Howard Stern Show) wed longtime partner Brad Altman today in Los Angeles. The couple married in a religious ceremony in the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum, the museum Takei helped create to honor those forced, as he was, to live in WWII internment camps….
Read the full story by Damon Romine at Asian Week.
Traditional Judaism regards homosexuality as “abhorrent”, but three progressive rabbis have agreed to conduct the Sydney ceremony for bookshop owner Scott Whitmont, 47, and nurse Christopher Whitmont-Stein, 38.
The couple, together for nine years, said they were excited that their relationship would be recognised by their faith, despite same-sex marriage being illegal in NSW….
The couple will wed under the traditional Jewish canopy or chuppah, exchange rings, say blessings over cups of wine and break a glass - another Jewish tradition….
Read the full story in The Australian.
Longtime Santa Cruz resident Larry Friedman married in June, first and foremost to cement his 16-year relationship, but also out of concern that he might lose the opportunity.
The state’s most talked-about ballot measure this year, Proposition 8, proposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that threatens the ceremony opened to Friedman and other gays and lesbians across the state just three months ago….
Read the full story by Kurtis Alexander at the Santa Criz Sentinel.
A Novato (CA) woman who helped convince the state Supreme Court that same-sex marriage should be legal got married herself Friday to her partner of 16 years at City Hall.
Therese Stewart, San Francisco’s chief deputy city attorney, married attorney Carole Scagnetti at a service in the South Light Court near the City Hall rotunda in front of more than 100 people….
Read the full story by Mark Prado in the Marin Independent Journal.
For years, Ira and I had mocked the idea that gay people wanted to get in on something we associated with an expensive party and useless gifts from Williams-Sonoma. How did gay liberation become marriage fetishization?
We rolled our eyes each time the same-sex marriage issue flared up - when gay people charged San Francisco’s City Hall (Rosie O’Donnell leading the herds) and when they flocked to New Paltz, N.Y., where a maverick mayor was performing marriages that were legal for even less time than Eliot Spitzer spent in office….
Read the entire column by Bob Morris in the New York Times.
The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.
The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure….
Read the full Associated Press story by Sarah Skidmore.
Hands clasped and raised high in victory, San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon and Dennis McShane faced family and friends legally wed….
In May, Gordon went down on his knee and proposed to 62-year-old McShane in their Menlo Park home after they learned the California Supreme Court had overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Both will pay close attention to the outcome of Proposition 8, a measure on the November ballot that would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry….
Read the full story by Christine Morente in the San Mateo County (CA) Times.
It happened first when we told our families and friends of our intentions. Suddenly, they had a vocabulary to describe and understand our relationship. I was no longer my partner’s “friend” or “boyfriend”; I was his fiancé. Suddenly, everyone involved themselves in our love. They asked how I had proposed; they inquired when the wedding would be; my straight friends made jokes about marriage that simply included me as one of them. At that first post-engagement Christmas with my in-laws, I felt something shift. They had always been welcoming and supportive. But now I was family. I felt an end — a sudden, fateful end — to an emotional displacement I had experienced since childhood.
The wedding occurred last August in Massachusetts in front of a small group of family and close friends. And in that group, I suddenly realized, it was the heterosexuals who knew what to do, who guided the gay couple and our friends into the rituals and rites of family. Ours was not, we realized, a different institution, after all, and we were not different kinds of people. In the doing of it, it was the same as my sister’s wedding and we were the same as my sister and brother-in-law. The strange, bewildering emotions of the moment, the cake and reception, the distracted children and weeping mothers, the morning’s butterflies and the night’s drunkenness: this was not a gay marriage; it was a marriage.
Read the entire essay by Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic Monthly.
San Diego Councilwoman Toni Atkins will marry partner Jennifer LeSar in September, in one of the first same-sex weddings for an elected official in California since the state Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ban in May.
“Neither Jennifer nor I are admitting to being the wife,” Atkins quipped….
Read the full story by Matthew T. Hall at the San Diego Union-Tribune.