Same-sex and the city
San Francisco's gay marriages have quickened the pace of political and social change throughout the country.

By Tali Woodward

ON THE EVENING of March 11, Ben Hipp was sitting in a Mission District bar playing liar's dice with one of his oldest buddies, another gay man who's lived in the city since the 1950s. They had already heard about the California Supreme Court decision that four hours earlier put an end to San Francisco's same sex-wedding march. The two men agreed the decision was "crap," but they didn't seem a bit discouraged.

"It started a little wave that's grown much bigger," Hipp said of the more than 4,000 same-sex marriages that took place here. "You can't take that away from people. They had their moment."

Hipp liked how the gay son of Pete Knight, the California legislator behind 2000's anti-gay marriage Proposition 22, was among the thousands who descended on City Hall to marry. ("He married a very nice-looking man, I must say – both of them are nice-looking.")

Hipp's interest went beyond the spectacle: he sees the events here as a turning point, emblematic of major shifts that have already happened and of more to come. "The ball is rolling," he said, "faster than ever before."

Twenty years ago Hipp believed gay marriage was coming, but he's surprised how quickly it arrived.

"I thought that it was inevitable, but I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime necessarily," he said. Now he's resolute: "It's a good thing. It's gonna happen."

The March 11 court order to immediately stop granting marriage licenses to gays and lesbians certainly dampened the upbeat civic mood, but it couldn't end the collective joy over forcing the entire country to reconsider the rationale for forbidding gay people from marrying.

There's no way to predict exactly how the political battle over gay marriage will unwind. It will be at least two months before the court even considers whether Mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority in granting the marriage licenses.

There is, however, a consensus that fully legal gay marriage is inevitable and that the action in San Francisco has condensed the timeline inalterably.

That makes what's happened here unique. When Hawaii moved toward legalizing gay marriage in the late 1990s, there was a brief stir but little lasting impact. Many people only heard about Vermont's civil union law when the governor who signed it, Howard Dean, ran for president. Even the conflict between the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, which wants gay marriages performed there by mid May, and the state legislature, which is more comfortable with civil unions, prompted little reverberation in other parts of the country.

But the San Francisco revolution – and it's really not much of a stretch to call it that – forced a massive, unprecedented surge of public action and debate.

The weddings intensified pressure on politicians across the country to stake out a position on the issue. There was a domino effect, as officials in Sandoval County, N.M.; New Paltz, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; and Ashbury Park, N.J., followed Newsom's lead, with varying degrees of success. Some predicted the trend would cause the Democratic Party trouble in November's presidential race, even though the party's presumptive nominee, Sen. John Kerry, opposes giving gays and lesbians full marriage rights.

Newsom's action also prompted conservatives to reassert their position that gay marriage is an enormous threat to the "sanctity of marriage," one that just might lead to the collapse of the world as we know it. And President George W. Bush echoed their sentiment when he called for a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage to protect "the stability of society."

In other words the issue makes more explicit the president's affinities with the religious right, which could pose its own election challenges. The Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives that ardently supported Bush in 2000, has since launched a $1 million ad campaign criticizing his marriage stance.

Plus, there's inescapable evidence that national attitudes about gay relationships are shifting. While polls show that a slim majority of Americans oppose marriage for gays, they show solid – and increasing – support for civil unions.

The saturation media coverage of queer marriage has been quite positive, even in some unlikely places. Conservative British magazine The Economist ran a cover story titled "The Case for Gay Marriage." The school newspaper at Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco, Texas, editorialized in favor of it too.

The photos and stories of all those couples reinvigorated the queer rights movement and prompted new discussion about related issues such as gay parenting, nontraditional families, and transgender rights. Discussions about sexuality, equality, the role of the state, and religion will continue to play out not only politically but also on the individual level.

Meanwhile, optimism abounds among supporters of gay marriage. The person who started it all, Newsom, predicted only a temporary lull in the queer weddings when the court injunction came down March 11: "I'm looking forward to arguing this case so that same-sex couples can enjoy the same basic rights as my wife and myself," he said. Newsom said the city would stop issuing the licenses but forcefully reiterated his position that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to marry.

Assemblymember Mark Leno has also vowed to keep up a high-profile fight for marriage equity. Leno had announced plans for Assembly Bill 1967, which would legalize gay marriage throughout California, back in January. It was considered a bold move at the time but was quickly overshadowed when Newsom ordered the clerk to go ahead and issue same-sex licenses.

"With the city having issued these 4,000-plus marriage licenses, I think it's an even better time" to push ahead with the bill, Leno told us. "We have to combat this notion that this is just those 'activist judges.' So to have a parallel legislative track, I think, only benefits the efforts."

The month of marriages in San Francisco "has certainly hastened the debate," Leno also said. "We see how quickly support for civil unions has become the moderate position."

Liam O'Donoghue contributed to this story.

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