Newsrom was Central to Same-Sex Marriage Saga
San Francisco Chronicle
By Erin Allday
November 6, 2008

A week before the election, Mayor Gavin Newsom was walking out of City Hall when an elderly man stopped him. He looked to be in his mid-80s, and he had an accent, German or Austrian.

He said in a quiet voice, "Mr. Mayor, thank you," Newsom recalled. "Thank you for what you did for my daughter."

The old man teared up and turned away, which was probably for the best, Newsom said. Otherwise both men would have been crying.

"Here's this guy, 15-20 years ago, imagine his daughter coming out and telling him she's gay. And now look at him," Newsom said. "I have not a second of regret about what we've done for same-sex marriage."

Newsom's rash decision four years ago to allow same-sex marriages, a choice made less than three weeks into his first term, fueled what arguably is the next civil rights movement. The debate over gay and lesbian rights, long simmering in the background of the national political landscape, has become one of the most important social issues of a generation.

Newsom kicked it off with an act of civil disobedience two days before Valentine's Day 2004 - the marriage of two women who had been together more than 50 years - and set off what would become a 29-day festival of same-sex weddings in City Hall.

A court injunction stopped those marriages, and the debate shifted to the California Supreme Court. When that court allowed the marriages in May this year, the parties started again - for 5 1/2 months, gays and lesbians had the legal right to marry.

It was, many couples have said with more than a little irony, a honeymoon period for gays and lesbians. But those months were tainted, they said, by the bitter fight over Proposition 8, the most expensive social-issue campaign in U.S. history.

On election day, California voters decided they could not support same-sex marriages, writing into the state Constitution that only a man and a woman may legally wed.

"I didn't think I'd feel so emotional when we married," said Michelle Kilmer, who wed her partner in a ceremony at their Pacific Grove home on Aug. 30. The couple's 16-year-old son walked them down the aisle, and Kilmer's father also attended. She hadn't spoken to him in the 16 years since she came out to her family.

"I was shaking. I could hardly talk when we said our vows. I didn't realize how much we were missing," Kilmer said. "They can't take away the experience of that day or the healing that happened in my family because of it. But I feel really devastated that other people are not going to be able to have that."

Instead of the noisy celebrations of weddings that had reverberated through City Hall over the past few months, the building was silent Wednesday. Genesis of an idea

Newsom has been blamed for a variety of shortcomings related to same-sex marriage, but few have accused him of using the topic as a calculated political maneuver. If anything, even his Democratic allies have argued, he should have put a bit more thought into it.

Newsom said the idea of marrying the couples came to him during President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2004. Newsom attended the speech and was quietly groaning along with other Democrats when Bush reached a section about social policies and the Defense of Marriage Act.

"This is 2004, we're in the middle of two wars, we've got global warming, we have the health care crisis, and this guy is talking about abstinence and steroid abuse and marriage? In the State of the Union?" Newsom said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, sure, I'm for abstinence, steroids are wrong, I don't like drugs. But I'm not sure I'd put it in my damn State of the Union. And then he ends this speech, the crescendo of the speech is Defense of Marriage."

Newsom said he felt sick as he walked out with a long line of politicians, and then he heard people praising Bush's speech and a few mention how pleased they were to hear the president "stand up on the gay issue."

"I remember thinking I must be living in a parallel universe," Newsom said.

He walked out into the January cold and decided to skip a party hosted by then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Instead, he made some phone calls. He asked his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, to look into what it would take to marry same-sex couples in San Francisco.

The answer was remarkably simple. The county clerk said technically it would require only changing a few lines on the form that couples filled out - instead of "bride" and "groom," they would ask for "applicant one" and "applicant two."

City Attorney Dennis Herrera also was drawn in right away. He said he embraced the idea, and he tasked his staff with two priorities: Make sure the city was following the letter of the law as closely as possible, and prepare a lawsuit to be filed the minute a court injunction stopped the weddings.

"We knew we were going to have to address the constitutionality issue," Herrera said. "Essentially right when the court issued its decision, it was inviting us to file a lawsuit, and we were ready to move within an hour saying the marriage laws were unconstitutional."

Newsom was not without opponents, even among his most trusted staff and mentors. His political advisers said it would be career suicide. His staff members said they needed more time.

Most troublesome, the country was heading into a major national election, with the presidency up for grabs in the midst of war and economic instability. The state's most prominent Democrats begged Newsom not to move forward. When he refused to listen, he was eventually blamed for the party's failing to win the presidency. Till death

The first same-sex marriage ceremony in San Francisco was a small, teary-eyed event in a private office of the city's assessor-recorder department. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, then 83 and 79 respectively, were two days short of their 51st anniversary when they married on Feb. 12, 2004.

Only about 20 people attended the ceremony, which was officiated by then-Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng. The words "spouses for life" stood in for "husband and wife" - a change now universal in same-sex weddings.

Newsom, for all his strategizing to make the wedding happen, did not attend. He'd been advised to steer clear to avoid politicizing the event. Instead, he said, he paced his office, frustrated that it was taking so long for the wedding to take place.

Everyone in City Hall was worried, he said, that the court would issue an injunction before the marriage. The plan had been to marry Martin and Lyon before 9 a.m. - before the courts opened. But the process was taking longer than expected, and the couple didn't exchange vows until 11:06 a.m.

"I was furious," Newsom said. "I was upstairs because I didn't want to create a political melee, and I kept calling down, like, 'Guys, are you done yet?' I kept thinking it wasn't going to happen."

That first day, everyone waited for the court injunction. The plan was that as soon as the court ordered the city to stop issuing marriage licenses, the city would obey.

No one expected the injunction to take 29 days.

That first day, 90 couples were married in City Hall. By the end of the long Presidents Day weekend on Feb. 17, more than 2,200 couples from around the state and country had been issued marriage licenses. At one point, the flood of callers knocked the City Hall phone system out of service.

Couples lined up around the block to get married. Some camped overnight. Cheers and applause regularly rang from the building, which stayed open extra hours to handle the wedding load. So many flowers were delivered that the extras were sent to local hospitals. One volunteer married 457 couples in less than a month. Parties halted

The injunction finally came on March 11. By then, 4,000 same-sex couples had been issued marriage licenses. All of the marriages later were annulled by the state Supreme Court.

As promised, Herrera filed a lawsuit immediately after the injunction. His top deputy, Therese Stewart, would see the battle through to the end as the case's lead attorney. She passionately argued to the court that denying gays and lesbians the right to marry - even if they were allowed civil unions and had all the legal trappings of marriage - was unconstitutional.

It was perhaps the greatest shock of the same-sex marriage battle when on May 15 when the Republican-dominated California Supreme Court declared marriage a constitutional right for gays and lesbians.

The 4-3 ruling stunned both opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage. By the eve of the court's announced ruling, rumors were circling that the justices were going to rule against the city. Herrera had written a defeat speech.

The Supreme Court that issued the ruling was a 6-1 majority of Republican appointees, including Chief Justice Ronald George, who was appointed to the high court by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1991.

George had written opinions in several civil rights cases, including a 1997 ruling overturning a law requiring parental consent for abortions for minors. The California Supreme Court was the first in the country to overturn a ban on interracial marriages, and George largely borrowed from that historic 1948 decision.

George wrote in his opinion that, among other things, the voter-approved state law against same-sex marriages effectively suggested that "gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects 'second-class citizens.' "

The constitution makes clear, he wrote, that "the right to marry represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with the person of one's choice, and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual."

Cheers erupted from the steps of the state Supreme Court building when the ruling was revealed, and revelers impulsively crossed the plaza and filled City Hall. Newsom said at the time that he was so moved by the news that he was afraid he'd start crying in front of his staff, or worse, in front of the hundreds of people waiting to hear him speak.

The parties that had started in February 2004 began anew. The city restarted the ceremonies on the evening of June 16, starting with Martin and Lyon - by then together for 55 years. Martin was very sick and died just two months later.

Yet before the ruling was even announced, conservative groups were collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to ban such unions. It qualified as the eighth measure on Nov. 4 ballot. 'Like it or not'

It was on the day of the Supreme Court ruling that Newsom gave his passionate speech on same-sex marriage and civil rights.

In that speech, he said: "As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It's inevitable. This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not."

Those words would come back to haunt Newsom and the campaign in support of same-sex marriage. It became the battle cry of the opponents of same-sex marriage, featured in radio and TV advertisements to display not just Newsom's perceived arrogance, but also the fear that supporters of gay and lesbian rights planned to trample over the beliefs of the rest of the state.

Newsom would take center stage again when he officiated at the wedding of a lesbian couple in City Hall, only to learn later that a group of schoolchildren - students of one of the women - had taken a day off to celebrate with their teacher. It was fresh material for the Yes on 8 campaign.

The battle over Prop. 8 quickly became vicious, on both sides. Campaigns pitted families and neighbors against one another. Fights broke out in some cities.

For the thousands of gay and lesbian couples in California who got married in the past five months, the joy and exhilaration of planning their weddings often was tainted by the bitter campaigns and the uncertainty of what would happen to their marriages after the election. On several occasions, City Hall weddings were interrupted by protesters, or couples found themselves walking through anti-same-sex-marriage rallies on the steps outside the building.

In many respects, Newsom has taken the blame all over again, this time for the loss of same-sex marriage. Political analysts say the success of Prop. 8 could, in fact, mean the end of his long-term career.

But the battle over same-sex marriage goes on.

"This country ultimately gets it right. That was my point in that speech," Newsom said. "It was about the march of equality. It's not always an easy fight. In fact, it's never been easy. But whether the majority of people like it or not, we get it right."

That provides little comfort to the couples who were married in the past 5 1/2 months.

By the end of the day Tuesday, more than 18,000 same-sex couples had been issued marriage licenses in California, according to estimates by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. More than a quarter of those were in San Francisco. No one knows exactly how many gay and lesbian weddings took place because marriage licenses don't include the gender of the spouses.

"What happens won't take anything away from us personally," said Robert Stahman of San Francisco, who married Jim Liefer, his partner of 15 years, on Monday.

"It will hurt from a discrimination standpoint," Liefer said. "But today, getting married, will still be a great day, a great memory for us. That won't change."