The Fight for Love

"The California Supreme Court did not simply rule that we had a right to marry, they ruled that any discrimination in state law based on sexual orientation will be subjected to withering scrutiny by the Courts of this state."
— Kate Kendell

Monday night my bride and a friend and I went to a community meeting on marriage equality at the Billy DeFrank LGBT Center in San Jose. The always-inspiring Kate Kendell of the National Center for Lesbian Rights was the guest speaker who laid it all out for us: how groundbreaking the CA Supreme Court ruling really was (see quote) and what it will take to beat the same-sex marriage ban on the November ballot in CA. We signed up to help with the campaign against this state constitutional amendment. I signed up for e-groups, of course.


So I was playing with Jonathan Feinberg's very cool Wordle, which generated this image from my tag cloud on delicious. Right now marriage and equality are almost impossible to find in the cloud. That will be changing, so it might be interesting to watch over time. Images created by the Wordle.net web application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Taking Another Leap!

“In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry — and their central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society — the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation.”
-- Chief Justice Ronald M. George, the California Supreme Court ruling

This blog began when I took the big leap of quitting my job. My next notable leap will be into legally wedded bliss. Of course after 17 years together, we already feel like an old married couple. But it stung when our previous marriage (San Francisco City Hall, President's Day, 2004) was nullified by the state, and we've been longing ever since to hear those words again, "By the power vested in me ..." So we're taking the leap and will be married in late July. And we're really excited about it!

Of course, there is work to be done. We've selected and reserved a meaningful location, settled on the scope (very small), picked a date and (a few hours ago) the time. Our dear friend MG, who notes she will be the only person (other than me) who has been at all of my weddings (1987, 2004, and 2008), will be deputized to officiate. A very few close friends and KJ's two local siblings will join us. We've done a little clothes shopping, knowing that whatever we buy will become our dressy outfits for the next n years. The question has arisen of the vows, but I am mostly in denial about that.

All this is goes on while my family is in a bubbling cauldron of change, with both my elderly aunt and my mother planning moves, one sister changing jobs, miscellaneous health problems, etc.. Keeping the wedding plans simple reserves time, energy and money for these other transitions. For me, planning our wedding is a joyous bright spot that helps keep me centered through all the turmoil.

We still have plenty of work ahead to defeat the November ballot initiative, so we've chosen to keep our wedding small and low-cost and put our money into the fight to keep our right to be married, and to extend that right to other same-sex couples. I'm starting to get questions about which charities are the most appropriate for wedding gift donations. I have a couple at the top of my list (Equality California and National Center for Lesbian Rights) and am open to suggestions of others. I'll include donation links in a follow-up post when I have more information and when we have one or more registries set up.