The easiest way to to watch is via C-SPAN.  They stream live on their web site at http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN.aspx (with an option for fullscreen viewing in a separate window).

If you’re in San Francisco or Pasadena or Seattle or Portland or Brooklyn or Boston, you can watch the proceedings at a courthouse.  Details about viewing in a courthouse are here in a PDF.  My wife, Moya, and I, will most likely be in one of the overflow viewing rooms in a San Francisco courthouse. I like sitting in an overflow room in a courthouse (usually a courtroom) with other people interested in the continuing Prop 8 legal trials.  At closing arguments in the last court trial, I met someone who called himself my “enemy.”

Mostly local to the San Francisco Bay Area, these TV and radio stations were granted their request for live broadcast or later broadcast.  The radio stations probably stream their broadcast on their web site or through iTunes or similar:

KGO-TV
KRON-TV
KTVU – Channel 2
ABC News (both TV and radio)
KCBS radio
KGO radio
KQED News
Non-Party Media Coalition (TV, Radio, Webcast) <— who’s that?
CBS Network News and PBS-Newshour and KPIX TV, CBS 5 and KXTV-News10 are videotaping for later broadcast

I’m hoping the results of this appeal end up more like this:

Aug 4, 2010 Prop 8 federal district court decision

And not at all like this:

May 26, 2009 California State Supreme Court decision

Sunny day outside the Federal building

As Moya and I walked to the Federal Building for the Prop 8 closing arguments yesterday (full transcript), I remembered all the times we’d walked that way to take Lucy to preschool, as well as the times when the marriage cases were before the California Supreme Court and we’d had to wade through Prop 8 supporters and opponents to get into the state building to take Lucy to preschool.

We entered the Federal building, took off our shoes, removed our laptops, got through security, and went to wait for an elevator to take us to the 19th floor where we planned to watch the arguments in the overflow room.  We were told that the overflow room was already full. No problem, we’ll just wait, I thought.

After we got through security we saw a good friend of ours who works in the building but couldn’t stop to chat much because we needed to get in line for the overflow room.  We waited for the elevator and noticed that one of the men waiting with us looked familiar (it was David Boies).  He was talking with a pregnant woman and said to her, “we have mostly friends here today.”

We got up to the 19th floor and got to the back of a line of approximately 20-30 people who were waiting for a space in the overflow room.  Moya chatted with the man standing in line behind us while I sat on the floor and configured apps on my gadgets.  At some point Moya mentioned Maggie Gallagher and I said something about how I’d like to invite Maggie over for a cocktail so she could see how much our family is more like hers than different, how our marriage isn’t threatening anything or anyone, and how our daughter is thriving and happy and healthy.  Eventually a woman came by and counted the people in line.  By then there were 70 or 80 people in line and I stood up to be counted and then chatted with Moya and the man who was behind us in line.  He talked about his high school son and his daughter in college and mentioned he lives in Southern California and that we should come visit sometime.

The first overflow room was full.  A second overflow room was opened up and we were counted as we walked in (I was number 30).  As we were walking past framed old photos, the man behind us in line mentioned the photos and that he’d been here in January for two weeks for the Prop 8 trial.  As we waited to walk into the overflow room I asked him what kind of work he did that allowed him 2 weeks off to fly up to San Francisco and watch a trial.  He leaned towards me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, with a smile, “I’m your enemy.” I thought he was being sarcastic and joking.  I laughed.  We continued some conversation about how people on both sides of Prop 8 have more in common than they might think.

Apparently he had a similar conversation in January during the Prop 8 trial, about the photos in the wall, about commonalities amongst people on both sides of Prop 8.  Davina Kotulski wrote, on January 22, 2010:

I started the morning with gulping down my latte. While I was doing this and admiring the historic photos of San Francisco on the 19th floor in the federal building, I struck up a conversation with the other person in the hallway. It turned out that I was talking to Brian Woodward from the California Family Council. We talked about how we could find our commonalities and exchanged business cards.

My view from the 2nd row

When we got into the overflow room, we felt lucky that we got a seat in the second row behind a large screen.  There were smaller screens on tables with chairs and large screens in front of rows of benches.  I checked Twitter and noticed people commenting about Maureen Dowd, in sunglasses and holding a Starbucks cup, sitting in the back of the other overflow room.  Brian and Moya and I were chitchatting and checking our devices before the Ted Olson’s closing argument began.  Olson was followed by Terry Stewart, attorney for City/County of San Francisco, and then the attorney for the governor and attorney for the attorney general were given time.  I loved that the state attorneys simply stood up and waived their time and said nothing in defense of Prop 8.

Then Judge Walker went over some marriage application forms with Claude Kolm representing the Alameda County Clerk Recorder.  I was never really sure why Alameda County was represented.  Judge Walker provided some comic relief when he said (from pages 68-69 of the transcript):

We didn’t check Alameda County, but just this morning checked San Francisco, Orange County and Imperial County. It appears on applications for marriage licenses that in San Francisco there is a box for groom, there is a box for bride and that’s labeled optional.

And in Orange County (sic) there is a bullet point for groom, a bullet point for bride, and one labeled none.
(Laughter.) And I think the same is true in Orange County (sic). And my understanding, although I personally didn’t go through the exercise, in the Orange County application, which you can apply for a marriage license online, if you fill out, say, groom and then fill out the data and then punch next, which would call up the other party, you can put in groom again. It doesn’t give you an error message.

return ticket for overflow courtroom

The morning session was done and we claimed a spot on a bench near a power outlet for later so we could re-energize MacBooks and Blackberry and Droid and iPhone after lunch.  As we left the overflow room for lunch we were handed a yellow ticket marked with an 8 to get back in.  Our friend Ed had brought us some delicious sandwiches.  A college friend of Moya’s, Merlin Nygren, met us to have lunch.  We tramped down 9 flights of stairs (because there were lines for the elevators) to the 10th floor  cafeteria to have lunch.

Moya’s college friend works in the building and knows his way around so he helped us find the right elevator bank to get back to the 19th floor.  The elevator doors closed.  When they opened again, Cleve Jones and Dustin Lance Black, among others, got on.  We mentioned to Cleve that we really appreciated his appearance at Lucy’s school‘s civil rights assembly last month, and I noticed that Dustin Lance Black is way cuter in person than on-screen.

While scanning a twitter list of people writing about the Prop 8 trial, I noticed there a lot of snark and sarcasm from both sides.  Most people, on either side, myself included, wrote a lot of dehumanizing and disrespectful commentary about each other.  We are all, after all, human, and deserving of basic rights and respects.  I wonder if the communities of No on Prop 8 and Yes on Prop 8, as well as our society as a whole, might be helped with some sort of  truth and reconciliation hearings regarding rights and opinions and harm and so on.

I also noticed that the Alliance Defense Fund had posted a Bible verse on Twitter, just after lunch, that reminded me of being told “I’m your enemy.”  The Yes on 8 people also blogged that morning at 8:18am and described Ted Olson as their nemesis. Why are these people so interested in battle and fighting and enemies instead of extending grace and compassion and bridging divides and increasing understanding?  When I went to grab a screenshot of the ADF’s tweet, I noticed that the Alliance Defense Fund has blocked me.  I’m still snarky.  I’m not sure if I’m honored by their block or not.

My high school friend Jeff Koertzen showed up and sat behind us for the afternoon, providing peanut gallery comic relief.  Thanks, Jeff!

The afternoon started with Charles Cooper’s closing argument.  During his argument he said. “Our submission, obviously, is that sexual orientation is not an immutable trait, that is an accident of — an accident of birth” (page 121 of the transcript).  He said, “religions that condemn homosexual conduct also teach love of gays and lesbians.” (can someone actually condemn and love? Condemn is often about disgust)  He discussed not wanting to invalidate the 18,000 marriages, and even Maggie Gallagher blogged “Cooper fighting hard to protect 18k gay marriages.” I don’t understand how they can hold and defend this conflict of supporting Moya and my marriage (as part of the 18,000) but not supporting other gay and lesbian marriages.

from http://www.prop8case.com/ee.php/blog_archive/cooper_fighting_hard_to_protect_18000_gay_marriages/

Then, finally, there was a short break, Ted Olson gave a rebuttal statement, the overflow room cheered and clapped at the end and we were done.

Moya and Ed and I headed over to Hastings for the press conference.  We ran into Brian, who we’d met that morning, and Moya asked him more about his role and why he was at the trial.  He said he works for the California Family Council — who we know was a major supporter of Prop 8.  We asked if he could point out Andy Pugno.  He said he could introduce us.  I said that Andy Pugno had contributed to harm and damage to my family and families like mine and I didn’t want to meet him.  I also was uncomfortable standing so close to the Yes on 8 people who were coming up to him to talk, asking him to watch their things while they did their press conference.  I realized I don’t really want to be associated with any of those people, just as much as they (or at least they say) don’t want to be associated with me.

Plaintiffs with attorneys Olson and Boies at press conference

Brian is a friendly guy.  He seems conflicted.  We shared stories about our kids and about travel and general chitchat.  He showed me pictures of his kids.  I showed him photos of our kid.  I talked about how religious beliefs in my family convince so many people in my family, and friends from my childhood, to shun me because I’m gay.  He works for an organization that has specifically chosen to fight Moya and my right to be married and define our family.  The organization he works for claims to support California families, but it doesn’t support our family.  His boss, Ron Prentice, said, on August 29, 2008 (coincidentally our daughter’s birthday), “”Same-sex “marriage” is the most radical human experiment yet, putting children at risk and threatening generational stability!”

Brian stayed for the Yes on Prop 8 part of the press conference and then gave me a hug and said goodbye before Ted Olson and David Boies had their press conference.  Reflecting back on what I’d said about Maggie Gallagher, I extended an invitation again to come over for dinner, have a cocktail, and continue our conversation.  He has our contact information if he’d like to keep in touch. I wonder why he couldn’t stay to hear our side.

What divides us as people is always much smaller than what can join us together as a community.

Lucy's Kindergarten Class

This morning 5 1/2 year old Lucy told me about a kid in her class who told her last week that a woman can’t marry a woman.  Just as she did in preschool and daycare, she said that she told her friend that’s not true because her mommy and momma are married and she was at their wedding and that she knows marriage is between two adults, a woman and a woman, or a woman and a man, or a man and a man.  She said that her friend told her that her parents’ marriage is not legal, and, this morning, she said, “I know you’re married, and it is legal, right?”

I simply said yes, your parents are legally married.  Otherwise, I would’ve answered her with all of the complications that involve lack of equal rights for our family.  Sure, it’s legal here in California, a handful of other states, and a short list of countries.  No, it’s not legal according to our country’s federal government, a long list of other states, and a long list of other countries.

The first time, that I know of, that she ever responded to the question of why she doesn’t have a dad, or the challenge of “a woman can’t marry a woman,” was when she was a toddler in daycare and one of her friends asked her why she doesn’t have a dad.  She was barely 2 years old, if that, and she told her friend “I have a mommy, momma, and wanda, and you have a mommy, daddy, and dog, and you are missing a momma and a wanda and I am missing a daddy and a dog, so everyone’s missing something.”

Sometime last fall or winter, when Moya and I were in Lucy’s classroom, one of her classmates asked us if we were sisters or cousins.  We said, no, we’re married to each other, we aren’t sisters or cousins.  The kid responded with surprise, “no way! Two women can get married?!”  We shrugged and said yes and left it at that.  The kid seemed happy to know it was a possibility.

I’m glad that Lucy’s figured out on her own to stand up for herself and answer questions about her family as though she’s simply reporting on the weather and I hope she always feels that confident about her family.

We have both Middle School and High School support groups for gay and lesbian students. While it is a general expectation that none of the staff focus on issues of their own sexuality, there are several staff who are themselves gay, so that is a built-in channel of support.  In the elementary school, it doesn’t come up very often. A couple of years ago, while going through a workshop on suicide, another counselor and I practiced through a scenario in which she played the role of a gay student in this small town. Pretty much her own life story, really. We talked about finding supports in this small town, as there are some good things in place. We also talked about getting out to a bigger area where she could find more people to lean on who were gay-friendly or gay themselves. I think that was really helpful for me personally to think through the issue in a person-centered way. My early (conservative Christian) upbringing probably would have leaned me toward the same type of counseling you got back in the day, but I hope that I am much closer to the point where I see people like Jesus would.

Come out! Come out!  Everyone needs to share a story like this to help basic human LGBT rights progress.  Telling these stories, however, requires coming out of a closet:  a story about what it’s like to be a gay student, how your family is no different from anyone else just because you have two moms, how your lesbian daughter is just as much of a good upstanding citizen and kind generous person, all of these stories require someone who is not necessarily LGBT (and is usually straight) to open a closet door.

The story above is such an improvement from my experience of attending public school in a rural area and a small town where there was no support for gay and lesbian kids.

For the staff at these schools, I wonder what would qualify as focusing on issues of their own sexuality.  If someone wears a wedding ring, does that indicate something about their sexuality?  If a woman mentions her husband then she has explicitly mentioned something about her sexuality, and I’m pretty sure that is not disallowed.  Usually when people are asked not to discuss their sexuality it’s a specific request for a gay or lesbian person to not mention their significant other.  For example, if I meet someone and mention my wife I’ve automatically implied that I’m a lesbian (or a man who mentions his wife automatically implies that he’s straight).

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I recently asked a church whether or not it was gay-friendly and why it doesn’t show up on lists of gay-friendly churches. I won’t include the name of the church here because it isn’t relevant.  It further shows how people think they are friendly while, in the same paragraph, describing how my marriage is not as worthy (or even affirmed or acknowledged) as a straight married couple.  I think the person who wrote this to me believes that this is welcoming and friendly (even though the word friendly is in quotes):

[We are] definitely “friendly” to gays and lesbians. We hope to welcome anyone who comes to church wanting to seek or worship Jesus. Where we differ from the churches listed is that we do not affirm a homosexual lifestyle, since we cannot find such an affirmation in Scripture. But I would guess we differ from other churches that [you] may have attended in that we are not condemning of gays or lesbians. As to leadership issues we continue to support the denomination’s current constitutional view: church officers must live in a faithful marriage relationship between a man and a woman, or in chaste singleness. Hope that assists.

Even if the above is clearly not friendly or accepting of my family, it’s a huge positive change for churches and schools to not condemn, and for someone to respond to me instead of ignoring me.  The writer, representing the church, clearly has good decent intentions, if not exactly friendly and welcoming words.

I first read this story, thanks to this a post on Twitter from a friend who protects her tweets.  I thought it was a great story and was impressed with the kid and glanced at the headline, and I wondered why The Examiner used the term “homosexual” when plenty of current newspapers specifically don’t.

Really, now, the term “homosexual” only belongs on a card like this:

The Examiner’s headline reads, “10-year-old refuses to pledge allegiance to country that discriminates against homosexuals” with story by Jennifer Chou.

The source article that is referenced resides at The Huffington Post where the headline reads, “Will Phillips, 10-Year-Old, Won’t Pledge Allegiance To A Country That Discriminates Against Gays.”

GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) writes about how the Associated Press, New York Times, and Washington Post have all restricted usage of the term homosexual in recent years because:

the term “homosexual” — a word whose clinical history and pejorative connotations are routinely exploited by anti-gay extremists to suggest that lesbians and gay men are somehow diseased or psychologically/emotionally disordered, and which, as The Washington Post notes, “can be seen as a slur.” AP and New York Times editors also have instituted rules against the use of inaccurate terminology such as “sexual preference” and “gay lifestyle.”

’nuff said.

In 2002, “President Bush announced that ‘gay rights are special rights,’ as his defense against criticism that came when he refused to enact various civil rights laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people from discrimination in their daily lives.”

March 5, 2009 in front of California State Building

The campaign for Prop 8 in California last year mostly used slogans of “marriage is one man plus one woman” and themes of “protecting” marriage and “protect the children” and so on.

However, by passing Prop 8 they unwittingly gave those exact “special rights” to a special class of approximately 18,000 couples who remain legally married, caught in time, in California in spite of Prop 8.

Yeah, sure that wasn’t their intent of Prop 8 but they didn’t include anything retroactive in their proposition language.

That’s exactly the “special rights” that these campaigns have been trying to fight against – to keep us from having any protection, from having any rights and responsibilities within our families, all in the name of “protecting children” and “protecting marriage.”

So then what’s my special locked-in-time-marriage status?  It’s special gay rights!

These anti-LGBT slogans and campaigns are slowly dying.  Even if, fingers crossed this doesn’t happen, Ref 71 in Washington is rejected and Question 1 in Maine is passed, the mantras of “protecting children from gays” and “keeping gay marriage out of school curriculum” and “saving traditional marriage” are being slowly dismantled because the anti-gay groups have no proof that marriages such as mine do any damage at all to the institution of marriage, to schools, and to children.

My special gay marriage protects my kid.  Before my special gay marriage was legal, domestic partnership protected my kid and me and my sweetie and helped define our family and give our family rights to each other that married people usually take for granted.

Approve Referendum 71 in Washington State!

Vote No on Question 1 in Maine!

Be kind.

Bill Nemitz, a respected Portland Maine columnist, has skewered the Yes on 1 campaign and smartly pointed out that No on 1 (a.k.a. Protect Maine Equality) is using real local citizens while the Yes on 1 campaign is mostly relying on stock images and an ad recycled from last year’s Prop 8 campaign in California and people who don’t live or work in Maine:

The anti-repeal “No on 1″ campaign overflows with real Mainers who are willing – no, make that eager – to go public in their support of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

And the pro-repeal “Yes on 1″ campaign? Not so much.

Since it took to the airwaves a month or so ago, Stand for Marriage Maine has attached four – and only four – faces to its televised ad campaign. And of those four, only one person is actually from Maine.

-from  Real Mainers step up for ‘No on 1′ ads

Paul Redicker, Catholic, Veteran, Mainer, stands up for all of us, “Maine’s moving along in the right direction …” — these real people standing up for marriage rights still make me cry because they don’t have to stand up for us and talk in front of a crowd, be video recorded and put on YouTube, and they do!

* “The rain in spain stays mainly in the plain …” (Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady)

Give this No on 1 campaign a few bucks to help them put and keep this ad on the air and hope that Maine doesn’t have the same experience as California-post-Prop8.

And Sam Putnam, this gorgeous kid? Give him more airtime!  I’m curious why the women with him are described as his mother and her partner — aren’t they both his mothers?

In Feb 2004, my wife and I were married at San Francisco City Hall.

San Francisco City Hall, Feb 14 2004

When the California Supreme Court invalidated our marriage in August 2004, we became domestically partnered within days to protect our rights when our daughter was born (my wife was pregnant and our daughter was born in late August, shortly after our marriage was invalidated). We don’t have any photos of our domestic partnership form signing.

Then we were married on Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, BC in March 2007.

Kitsilano Beach, March 31 2007

We were married in San Francisco in Golden Gate Park in October 2008 and in May 2009 the California Supreme Court decided that our marriage was still legal.

San Francisco, October 5 2008

The campaigns to reject referendum 71 in Washington State have brought out arguments to reject referendum 71 because it’s “everything but marriage.”  That’s a big fat lie.  Domestic partnership is nothing like marriage.

Ask Flickr: domestic partnership has 700ish search results and marriage has 700,000ish search results

According to Wikipedia, one is very legalese and the other is very touchy feely, guess which one?

A domestic partnership is a legal or personal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union.

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged by a variety of ways, depending on the culture or demographic.

They’re both a legal state, but marriage is usually associated with romance – look at the words in the Wikipedia definition: kinship, interpersonal, intimate, sexual, acknowledged – and domestic partnership has a negative definition: “share … but are neither joined …”

From the records of our family and our relationship, it’s clear that a marriage means photos and flowers and fancy clothes and people showing up and a party and lots of documentation and gifts and records and cards and photo albums.  A domestic partnership is a legal document kept in a safe with copies kept with us when we travel (in case someone questions our legal relationship in a time when we need to be recognized as something other than “friends”).

We don’t have any photos from the day we were domestically partnered at the California Secretary of State’s office.  We didn’t throw a party and we didn’t send out announcements or receive gifts or dress up or buy flowers — and we didn’t invite anyone and nobody showed up to toast us.  There was a bike messenger in front of us in line and my wife was 9 months pregnant and a woman was reluctant to let her use a bathroom.

The “deny domestic partnership” crowd is afraid of their children learning about gay people in school, but their children are already learning about gay people in school. Children with gay and lesbian parents are sitting next to their children in school.  They claim that domestic partnership is “everything but marriage.” It’s not.

Domestic partnership rights protect families and children. The Prop 8 groups in California even conceded (and argued in court) that it was okay with them to give domestic partnership rights to gay and lesbian couples, just not marriage (though we are still married and our marriage seems to be doing no harm to any children or schools in California).

Without domestic partnership rights, gay and lesbian couples can jump through legal hoops to take care of each other — and pay legal bills that seem like a gay tax.

Approve Referendum 71 in Washington and retain dignity and responsibility and rights for people who already do more than most couples to secure their legal ties to each other and protect their relationship.