our San Francisco anniversary

Today is Valentine' Day, but for me it's the anniversary of the first time that David and I were married. In February 2004, Gavin Newsome, the mayor of San Francisco, ordered his staff to offer marriage licenses to all couples regardless of their sexual orientation. The first couple married was Del Lyon and Phyllis Martin, who had been advocates for equal rights for lesbians and gays since the 1950s. Then other couples were married. We heard about it on the Thursday before Valentine's Day. We had planned a "date night" for the two of us that Valentine's night, and Millie and Phil were going to babysit Leo. But when the chance to get married came up, I wanted to go for it. David was skeptical regarding the legality of the marriage but went along for me. So Valentine's morning, the three of us plus Millie and Phil drove to San Francisco, which is about 70 miles away.

When we arrived about 10:30, the line was about 3/4 of the way around City Hall. We stood in line from 10:30 until about 3:00, then were finally in the chaos of the clerk's office. The staff volunteered to work on Saturday and were handling huge volumes of marriage applicants. Once we received our license, there were city workers who were deputized (if that's the right word) to perform the ceremonies, and one of Gavin Newsome's assistants married us, with Leo and Millie and Phil watching.

As we came out of City Hall, there were a few UC Berkeley students giving out flowers to the couples. I still have the dried petals from the flowers.

Afterward, we called another gay couple that we knew in San Francisco. We met them though our adoption agency, and they adopted their son about 6 months before Leo was born. They got married on Thursday or Friday. They invited us over to their house and fed the five of us dinner.

As you know, the California Supreme Court later declared the marriages "null and void", but invited people affected to file suit challenging the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage. That led to the decision for marriage equality in 2008, and we were married again in August 2008.

So now we have three anniversaries that we celebrate. The one that we think of as our real anniversary is the day of our first date, which was in July 1991. It was the only date that we celebrated for over a decade. Then we added our San Francisco anniversary on Valentine's Day. Plus we have the date that we were legally married. So we kinda celebrate all three, but mostly our July first date anniversary.