Moya and I were legally married in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, near Ocean Beach, on Sunday October 5. It was a gorgeous sunny bluesky day and we both got sunburns (a nice reminder that it was not foggy or cloudy). The sweetest part of the wedding ceremony was when our 4 year old daughter Lucy gathered flowers around the garden and brought them to us while simultaneously asking us if we could just go home (she doesn’t like crowds or large groups of people and there were 114 friends and family at our wedding). The most charming part, I thought, was when Moya accidentally said “I will strive to be quick to anger and slow to forgive” as a part of her vows, then she chuckled and told a joke, “A man walked into a bar. Ouch,” before continuing with her vows.
It was all truth and beauty and joy when the Reverends Jim Lowder and Jerene Broadway (good friends of ours) married us. There was also a slight shadow of the forces in California who’d like to yet again invalidate our marriage. Why would anyone want to interrupt this joy?
There were a lot of strangers, standing just outside the garden on the sidewalk, watching our wedding ceremony. They mostly smiled and clapped for us when we walked up and mostly smiled and cheered and clapped when we walked out.
However, there was one man in a red baseball cap and blue shirt taking multiple continuous pictures of us. We wonder why he was taking so many pictures – are we going to show up in a Yes on Prop 8 ad as an example of who “they” don’t want their children to see? I saw an ad with pictures of gay and lesbian couples kissing and a fearful voiceover mentioning that “we don’t want our children to see this.”
It’s not comfortable to be legally married with the election looming ahead and the possibility of our legal marriage being invalidated once again – our relationship is most certainly not an invalid. All of the staff at the hotel where we stayed congratulated us and said “have a beautiful life together.” We dropped our marriage license off at city hall and the clerk behind the counter congratulated us. Today a bottle of champagne (Thanks, Ali and Elise and Max!) was delivered to us. It’s a supportive bubble here in San Francisco and I hope a majority of the rest of the state will support us too.
