Cheers filled San Francisco’s City Hall shortly after 5 p.m., Monday night, as longtime lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, partners for more than 50 years, began their second wedding – and their first legal union.
Lyon, 83, and Martin, 87, were the first couple married four years ago when Newsom told the county clerk’s office to start offering marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Eventually more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married in San Francisco that year, but those unions were later nullified by the court. Today, the couple, and dozens of others, had their first chance to make their unions truly legal…
“This is an extraordinary moment in history and extraordinary moment in time” Newsom said to the crowd. “They are extraordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives and spent half a century fighting for justice and equality…”
Luong Do, who said he drove up from San Jose, held a giant sign that read, “homo sex is a threat to national security.”
Others were there to support the pending nuptials. One man strummed a guitar and sang “Going to the Chapel,” while Kathryn Werhane threw rose petals on some of the protesters.
Of course, there still are those who think second-class citizenship is OK – for someone else. Someday, their children and grandchildren may forgive them. It’s the “Christian” thing to do. Right?
There you go, #31 Stinker! I’ve got no problems with polygamy either! And the majority of the religious people in America worship a god who richly blessed those who practiced polygamy. Look at how many wives King Solomon had, and King David, and into their blessed bloodline the holy savior Jesus was born!
As for NAMBLA, I’m not in favor of sex with children, but then again, I don’t like a lot of things Congress does š
WOW! I never knew that Don Imus was a woman! How weird!!
Get the hell over it. So you didn’t like seeing black folk get married to white folks, or Jews move into your Christian neighborhood, or the Irish take your jobs. All of these endless stream of worries about how our society is falling to hell because of THEM, the unclean…the (insert group of the moment) is ALWAYS historically wrong. These are people who love each other and want to commit to each other for life. How is that wrong? How is that making us less strong? If you object because of magic (your invisible magical sky being), so be it, but there is no rational scientific reason to say no. Any more than there was to stop blacks from marrying whites. The EXACT word for word arguments were used for that (destroy marriage, weaken families, shows how corrupt our society is going, next you’ll be able to marry a monkey or dog, etc, etc). You racist bigots were wrong then, and you’re wrong now…you’re always wrong. LOVE is always the right answer and always good. Hate and fear and mistrust are always wrong.
#32 I’m sorry you don’t get your all white society free of gays, Jews, blacks and immigrants. Sorry you have to live in the real world where everyone isn’t just like you. How screwed up were your parents to give you such anger and a messed up moral grounding? Two people want to love each other forever and you think THAT’S what’s wrong with society and marks the end of marriage? That is MESSED UP dude! So if we took the same people (blood, brain, hearts) but just changed the shape of the sexual genitals on one them, it’s magically ok and good for society and everything is ok?
Keep in mind, it’s you straight people who have destroyed marriage. You’re the ones with the 50% divorce rate..that’s ALL you. It’s gays that want MORE marriage, not less. š
Your logic is nuts. You want less marriage, less love, less families. You just want the right “type” of families…you know, keep out THOSE type of people…eck.
I see a flock of my “good xhristians” is here, today. Of course, belonging to one of the lesser denominations, it’s consistent with their dimensional inadequacy to condemn larger religions which do allow for polygamy.
The worrywarts have it right, of course. That’s why they condemned rock’n roll – too many black-and-white couples.
Gay couples are being too public and just like the generations that followed on from rock’n roll – since few here will admit to political struggles for equality having changed Amerika at all – the generations that follow on from gay folks out of the closet on TV and the Big Screen will look back to the tawdry babbling of our Defenders of the Faith and wonder what they were ranting about.
#28–gary==you are right. I was not looking at their activism. In that sense, they did persevere. Not so with simply staying what they were?
Words are nitpicking things.
And Star Trek still overrules bigotz:
That’s not a marriage. There’s two women in the picture.
Small test for the supporters:
-Can two gay brothers marry?
-If yes, can non-gay brother and sister marry?
-Can gay triplets brothers marry?
-If yes, can any gay or non-gay group of three adults marry?
…
And so on,… If it is such universal right we shouldn’t have any problems… But I bet even Gay-right activist won’t rally for all those causes together. Only for their own view.
I personally think that NJ state law is the proper way to address this cultural issue: gay couples can join into the state-consecrated union that gives them every single equal right as the ordinary married couples have. Avoiding to call it marriage and hence avoiding all side-pitfalls that go with it. Why is having the name “marriage” so important? Because it is not about equal rights but politics and attempt to social – engineer the society. Nothing else.
>>Mustard, you didnāt detect the subtle
>>shift/addition to my position?
Oh. You mean you realized you were wrong and made a 180-degree about-face?
Congratulations, Bobbo!
The noun “marriage” is most important to the creeps who keep trying not to admit it.
Their god told them so.
#41 – Mr maletic
>>Why is having the name āmarriageā so important?
You tell us. It seems to be extremely important to the anti-rights crowd that whatever gay people are allowed to do, it NOT be called marriage?
What’s the big problem? If a civil untion “gives them every single equal right as the ordinary married couples have”, what’s the big deal? Why not just call it marriage and be done with it?
As to your pop quiz, do civil unions (which you seem to support) allow hetero brothers and sisters, threesomes, and homo brothers to unite civilly?
If not, then the only reason not to call what gays and lesbians do when they tie the knot “marriage” is to placate a minority of hatemongers and xenophobes.
#46 – ‘dro
What else is there to do? The gainsayers have never proffered a single argument for legislating against gay marriage other than “that’s the way it was 100 years ago” or the Dumbyan proclamation that “God told them that marriage is only between a man and a woman”.
It’s self-evident that these anti-marriage folks are homophobes, almost by definition.
#41 dusan maletic asked, “Why is having the name ‘marriage’ so important? Because it is not about equal rights but politics and attempt to social – engineer the society. Nothing else.”
Is social engineering bad, good, or just a basic practice of civilizations everywhere, with widely varying models? And which situation seems to be more heavily engineered — the one with a broad and more flexible definition for marriage, or the one that only includes couples you think are paired correctly according to gender? It just seems that “social engineer” isn’t a phrase you’d want to use as any sort of epithet, Mr. Kettle.
Concerning your questions about incestuous pairings, don’t forget that the entire Jewish race is descended from the incestuous marriage between Abraham and his half-sister Sarah. I’m sure you’ll want to be very careful not to implicitly slander an entire race by casting aspersions on the effects of incest, or the suggestion that such a pairing wasn’t really a proper marriage between Abraham and Sarah.
#46 PRECISELY!
Why do gays insist on shoving their sexual behavior down our throats? There ARE such things as domestic partner benefits after.
I think heterosexuals should get out there and protest the fact that we are being buried by a bunch of sissified freaks. “hatemongers” – if that is what you want to call us, fine, but we know who the REAL haters are.
I still contend that San Francisco should be wiped clean off of the face of the planet so we can start over.
This whole argument is moot though, since this will be voted down in the upcoming election. Where a small panel of jackass judges get the balls to override the prevailing mindset, I have no idea. It is, after all, a VERY small subset of the population that actually agrees with this rubbish.
#49 – Potato Head
>>āhatemongersā – if that is what you want to call us,
>>fine, but we know who the REAL haters are.
>>
>>I still contend that San Francisco should be wiped
>>clean off of the face of the planet so we can start
>>over.
Yep, you know who the real haters are. Thanks for giving us such a great example.
>>Why do gays insist on shoving their
>>sexual behavior down our throats?
If anything’s getting shoved down your through, Irish, I’d say it’s voluntarily happening at the gloryhole.
Otherwise, wtf? If allowing people to do what they want to in their personal lives is “shoving” something “down your throat”, you must have a very spacious through.
Best to close your mouth.
through = throat š
And do you promise to make this woman’s face look like a glazed doughnut?
[Cripes! – ed.]
#53 ‘dro
>>Thatās why most of the people are going
>>ābah, who cares!ā
Well, given the amount of spittle that’s flying from the mouths of the right wingnuts, obviously THEY care.
For a topic that “most of the people” are going “bah, who cares”, gay marriage sure seems to whip up a frenzy among the wide-stancing right-wing homophobes.
I wonder why that is.
Here’s the bottom line:
Gay people are Americans and have the rights of Americans.
Voting. Driving. Gun ownership. Military. Marriage. Everything you and I have.
#50 yep Mustard, you are the hater. Go throat some more cock and shut up for once.
Look, it doesn’t matter if you like gays or hate them. It doesn’t matter what your religion, your pastor or James Dobson believes about the value of the lifestyle.
Gay people are Americans. They have _ALL_ the rights of any other American.
End of debate.
I think what might happen in these tight economic times is for one state to turn gay marriage into a tourist industry, and then other states will be lining up to legalize it š
in a two hundred years every one then, will look back and wonder what the big deal was.
Polygamy has more support in history than so-called gay ‘marriage.’ Should we allow that too? For that matter, pedophilia has a greater history too, from the Greeks to Kandahar. Should we allow that too? The Amer Psychiatric Association is already giving support for the idea that pedophilia is normal.
#27, Crimson,
Well, freedom of slavery started as an amendment,
Nope. The abolishment of slavery started in the Northern states. There never was a Constitutional section allowing for slavery. It was just a recognized fact of life when the Constitution was written. The institution of slavery was abolished nationally by an Amendment.
#53 Pedro
” Itās so devalued that heteroās donāt want to marry anymore.”
For your information the Gay & Lesbian community didn’t devalued marriage. Heterosexual couples already did it without any help at all.
I’m, personally, optimistic about marriage, gay or straight.
I know lots of people who take it seriously and are the better for it.
Most of the divorced people I know took it seriously despite the failure, marrying again and getting it right the second time.
I’m not saying marriage is better than whatever you may have going-one. I’m just saying that it can be a really good thing for lots of people. It is far from a failed social institution.
MikeN,
How can you deny Gay Americans the same rights you have?
You also want to deny them the right to vote, own property or get a job? That’s crazy.
Face it. They are Americans and have the same rights as you.