The big day
Why Victor and Troy got married

WHEN THE NEWS broke of Mayor Gavin Newsom's groundbreaking decision, my boyfriend of five years was out of the state and would not return for another two weeks. Everyone I knew asked if Victor and I had gotten married; I curtly reminded them that Victor was away on tour till nearly the end of the month. You can't obtain a marriage license without your partner being present, and with the governor breathing down the state attorney general's neck, I was doubtful he would return before a stay was issued.

Victor phoned me shortly after the news broke, and we both confessed that watching Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin marry on TV had brought us to tears. How could we not cry at the sight of San Francisco's, if not the country's, greatest long-term couple finally granted the dignity of doing what any drunken straight couple in Vegas could do? We both agreed over the phone to try and marry as soon as Victor returned. If this had the potential of going up all the way to the Supreme Court, then we both wanted our names on that lawsuit.

The legal benefits of marriage were very much in our minds, since we had just bought our first house. We were fully aware how little protection a domestic partnership on its own would provide should one of us die, and that all of our financial life together has had to be protected by probate law. Things like estate taxes had never been that important to us, but now we had a more than tangential understanding of how marriage serves as a means of security. Who wants their partner to struggle holding on to what they have built together should he or she die?

A few days after I got the appointment, Victor casually mentioned we would need to get rings for the ceremony. "Rings?" I said. "I don't wear jewelry. Not even a watch." It had slipped my mind that of course the ceremony usually included the exchanging of rings. The ring loomed large in my mind, and my closest married friends assured me that I would want to wear the ring after the wedding, that getting married makes you feel different about your relationship.

Can a gay man get wedding jitters? I certainly felt them three days before my wedding, as I stood in front of the small section of men's rings at Macy's in a daze. I had no doubt of the love we shared, and the excitement and nervousness felt right. I certainly wouldn't get these jitters from downloading the California State Domestic Partnership form and paying $10.

It was, without a doubt, the greatest day in my life. When Victor took my hand to walk up the grand staircase of City Hall, I cried after the first few steps. But the sweetest of all was having more than 15 of our closet friends witness the ceremony and congratulate us afterward. I realized gays rarely get praise for their relationships, and after this week, I wish that every fag and dyke got the right to feel as nervous as I was before my wedding day. There truly is no other feeling like it.

Troy Gaspard

I've always felt the goals in our relationship (if you can have such things) were to make each other happy, be honest with each other, and take care of each other. I don't think we've ever had a moment of hesitation about this in our five years together. And I knew from the moment I met Troy that he was not afraid of making the personal political, and that was one of many feelings we shared. So now we're part of this movement, a proud part of it.

Troy and I have never been monogamous, although we've spent almost every night together over the past five years. We are not the perfect couple, and we are not interested in many of the prescribed attributes of what people often think makes a union. But our relationship has been the central anchor of both of our lives since we met.

Dedicated to each other as we have felt, we hadn't really thought of marriage as an option for ourselves. Both of us had been pretty biting toward close friends of ours in long-term relationships who had decided to marry after years together. Sure, it made health insurance easier for them, but did they really need to go and get married? We didn't feel the need for the validation of marriage. Or so we thought.

But once Newsom opened the doors of possibility, we realized it wasn't anything that had ever been offered to us, and it was hard to deny that we did want to be married, for both personal and political reasons.

We would like to be part of the movement to redefine marriage as we want it for ourselves. As a dedicated, loving couple in a long-term relationship, we want to take care of each other and we want to have our relationship acknowledged by our friends and family, but also by the state. And we like to make our own mold. Our relationship is as valid as any in this society, and we have the right to not be marginalized by anyone.

We were married on Wednesday, March 10, at City Hall at noon. It was a joyous, wonderful experience that I never anticipated we'd be able to do, and I'm intensely grateful to all the people who fought for us to be able to have that right. The pain in the faces of the people who were denied this privilege the next day was almost too much for me to look at. This fight is about our civil rights and about sanctioning our love in the eyes of society and the state. It won't be ending anytime soon, but with luck, neither will our marriage.

Victor Krummenacher