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“My Super Illegal San Francisco Marriage, Twenty Years Later” by Beachfox
An autobiographical account of a turning point in queer history, from the memory of someone who was there.
Today’s story is “My Super Illegal San Francisco Marriage, Twenty Years Later” by Beachfox who’s been posting homoerotic art online since before he was married. Can be found as Beachfox on various art sites and TheRealBeachfox on Tumblr.
The following is a true story, told entirely from the recollections of the author.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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Transcript
You’re listening to Pride Month
Speaker:on The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf, your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Today’s story is
Speaker:“My Super Illegal San Francisco Marriage,
Speaker:Twenty Years Later”
Speaker:by Beachfox who’s been posting homoerotic art online
Speaker:since before he was married.
Speaker:Can be found as Beachfox on various art sites
Speaker:and TheRealBeachfox on Tumblr.
Speaker:As powerful as fiction is, to change the world,
Speaker:as necessary as it is to define ourselves,
Speaker:there is a power in a true story,
Speaker:one that witnesses to an authentic event
Speaker:which really happened.
Speaker:The San Francisco Weddings of Opportunity, also known as the Same-Sex Protest Weddings
Speaker:took place from February 12
Speaker:to March 11, 2004, when then-mayor Gavin Newsome directed the county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in response to President Bush’s homophobic state
Speaker:of the union address.
Speaker:It is estimated that the city was able to perform
Speaker:over four thousand marriages
Speaker:before the state managed to them down.
Speaker:The following is a true story,
Speaker:told entirely from the recollections of the author.
Speaker:Please enjoy “My Super Illegal
Speaker:San Francisco Marriage,
Speaker:Twenty Years Later”
Speaker:by Beachfox Twenty years ago,
Speaker:February 15th, 2004,
Speaker:I got married for the first time.
Speaker:It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
Speaker:To celebrate/commemorate the date, I'm sitting down
Speaker:to write out everything I remember as I remember it.
Speaker:No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before.
Speaker:I'm not going to turn to my husband
Speaker:(of twenty years, how the f'ing hell)
Speaker:to remember a detail for me.
Speaker:This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco.
Speaker:But it -is- a 100%
Speaker:accurate recounting of how I remember it today,
Speaker:twenty years after the fact.
Speaker:Join me below, if you would. 2004 was an election year,
Speaker:and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today,
Speaker:in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff.
Speaker:Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage
Speaker:from destroying everything good and decent in the world.
Speaker:Enter Gavin Newsom.
Speaker:At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco.
Speaker:Despite living next door to the city
Speaker:all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004
Speaker:when he announced
Speaker:that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.
Speaker:It was a political stunt.
Speaker:It was very obviously a political stunt.
Speaker:That shit was illegal, after all.
Speaker:But it was a very sweet political stunt.
Speaker:I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women
Speaker:hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.
Speaker:But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system
Speaker:to come in and make them knock it off.
Speaker:The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance,
Speaker:and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
Speaker:“Everyone else?” Goes I,
Speaker:“I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”
Speaker:“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday.
Speaker:Presidents Day on Monday and all.
Speaker:They’re doing them all weekend long!”
Speaker:We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet.
Speaker:I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN,
Speaker:and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what
Speaker:bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.
Speaker:"Well shit", me and my man go,
Speaker:"do you wanna?" I mean,
Speaker:it’s a political stunt,
Speaker:it won’t really mean anything,
Speaker:but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?
Speaker:The next day, Sunday,
Speaker:we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station.
Speaker:We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth
Speaker:all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.
Speaker:We had slightly miscalculated.
Speaker:Apparently, demand for marriages
Speaker:was far outstripping the staff
Speaker:they had on hand to process them.
Speaker:Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday
Speaker:had been given tickets with times to show up
Speaker:Sunday to get their marriages done.
Speaker:My babe and I,
Speaker:we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.
Speaker:“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?”
Speaker:I asked. “It’s a holiday”
Speaker:“Oh sure,” they reply,
Speaker:“but people are allowed to volunteer their
Speaker:time to come in and work on stuff anyways.
Speaker:And we have a lot of people
Speaker:who want to volunteer their time
Speaker:to have the marriage licensing offices open
Speaker:tomorrow.” “Oh cool,”
Speaker:we go, “Backup.” “Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say,
Speaker:“because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday,
Speaker:and will be reviewing the motion
Speaker:that got filed to shut us down.”
Speaker:And all this shit is super not-legal,
Speaker:so they’ll totally be shutting us down
Speaker:goes unsaid. — We don’t get in
Speaker:Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though. It’s…
Speaker:incredible. I can say, without hyperbole,
Speaker:that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness
Speaker:in all my life before or since. My face
Speaker:literally ached from grinning.
Speaker:Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd
Speaker:and cheering and leaping
Speaker:and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in
Speaker:full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another.
Speaker:A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi.
Speaker:One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in.
Speaker:More than once I was given some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.
Speaker:At some point in the mid-afternoon,
Speaker:there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps,
Speaker:even though no one was coming out.
Speaker:There was a group going
Speaker:up the steps to head inside,
Speaker:with some generic black-haired shiny guy
Speaker:at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me,
Speaker:“That’s Newsom.” He said,
Speaker:because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.
Speaker:Ooooooh, I go. That explains it.
Speaker:Then I joined in the cheers.
Speaker:He waved and ducked inside.
Speaker:So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February,
Speaker:so it’s only six or so,
Speaker:but it’s getting dark.
Speaker:“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow
Speaker:-now-?” we ask. “Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us.
Speaker:“We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security.
Speaker:We’d need Porta-Potties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot,
Speaker:and no one had time to get all that organized.
Speaker:Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train
Speaker:up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.”
Speaker:Monday is the last day to do this,
Speaker:after all. — So we go home.
Speaker:We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get
Speaker:the first train up.
Speaker:We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.
Speaker:The line stretches
Speaker:around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall.
Speaker:You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people
Speaker:who’re up to be first through the doors
Speaker:and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
Speaker:“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”
Speaker:So. Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?
Speaker:Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security.
Speaker:And some anonymous person
Speaker:delivered over a dozen Porta-Potties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
Speaker:It’s 6:30 am,
Speaker:there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this
Speaker:literal once in a lifetime
Speaker:marriage, the last chance
Speaker:we expect to have
Speaker:for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front.
Speaker:It was not looking good.
Speaker:We were just happy we lived in California
Speaker:where we at least weren’t likely to lose job protections any time soon.)
Speaker:Then it starts to rain.
Speaker:We had not dressed for rain. —
Speaker:Here is how the next
Speaker:six hours go. We’re in line.
Speaker:Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow
Speaker:crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat!
Speaker:So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice
Speaker:wearing trashbags
Speaker:over it. Everyone
Speaker:is so happy. Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.
Speaker:People online start making delivery orders.
Speaker:Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it.
Speaker:We get pizza. We get roses.
Speaker:Random people come by
Speaker:who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us.
Speaker:The tour busses make detours to go past the lines.
Speaker:Chinese tourists lean out with their
Speaker:cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.
Speaker:A single sad man holding a Bible
Speaker:tries to talk people out of doing this,
Speaker:tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour.
Speaker:A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will.
Speaker:She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.
Speaker:The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors.
Speaker:Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which…
Speaker:Yes they do. A lot of snide words are said (by me)
Speaker:about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it
Speaker:proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.
Speaker:Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on.
Speaker:The doors face East.
Speaker:We start on Northside.
Speaker:Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side.
Speaker:Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun.
Speaker:Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth. —
Speaker:We have Line Neighbors.
Speaker:Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us.
Speaker:They’ve been together for eight years.
Speaker:The older one is a school teacher.
Speaker:He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him.
Speaker:He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired.
Speaker:The younger one will step away
Speaker:to get interviewed on his own later on.
Speaker:They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on.
Speaker:They’d started around the same time we did,
Speaker:coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
Speaker:The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside
Speaker:to tackle the younger of the two into a hug.
Speaker:She’s their local friend
Speaker:who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them.
Speaker:Her friends cry on her shoulders
Speaker:at her unconditional joy.
Speaker:Behind us are a lesbian couple
Speaker:who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together.
Speaker:“We met here Valentines Day weekend!
Speaker:We live down in San Diego, now,
Speaker:but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”
Speaker:“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says,
Speaker:“and we can’t leave
Speaker:until we get married.
Speaker:I called work Sunday and told them I calling in
Speaker:sick until Wednesday.”
Speaker:“I told them why,” her partner says,
Speaker:“I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it.
Speaker:This is worth it. Fuck them.”
Speaker:My husband-to-be and I look at each other.
Speaker:We’ve been together for not even two years at this point.
Speaker:Less than two years.
Speaker:Is it right for us to be here?
Speaker:We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple
Speaker:that’d been together longer,
Speaker:who needed it more, who deserved it
Speaker:more. “Don’t you fucking
Speaker:dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
Speaker:“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.
Speaker:“You kids are too cute together,”
Speaker:says the gay couple’s friend.
Speaker:“you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years,
Speaker:and you deserve to have been married by then.”
Speaker:We stay in line. It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last
Speaker:that we pick up our own companions.
Speaker:A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt
Speaker:with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders.
Speaker:“Can we say we’re with you?
Speaker:His uncles are already inside
Speaker:and they’re not letting
Speaker:anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.”
Speaker:“Of course!” we say.
Speaker:The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is,
Speaker:but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.
Speaker:We pass by a statue of Lincoln
Speaker:with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags
Speaker:tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
Speaker:It’s about noon, noon-thirty
Speaker:when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
Speaker:They’ve promised
Speaker:that anyone who’s inside
Speaker:when the doors shut
Speaker:will get married.
Speaker:We made it. We’re safe.
Speaker:We still have a -long- way to go. —
Speaker:They’re trying to fit
Speaker:as many people into City Hall as possible.
Speaker:Partially to get people out of the rain,
Speaker:mostly to get as many people indoors as possible.
Speaker:The line now stretches
Speaker:down into the basement
Speaker:and up side stairs and through hallways
Speaker:I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to.
Speaker:We crawl along slowly
Speaker:but surely. It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices
Speaker:that someone comes along handing out the paperwork.
Speaker:“It’s an hour or so until you hit the office,
Speaker:but take the time
Speaker:to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”
Speaker:We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs,
Speaker:on stone floors, on books.
Speaker:We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past. I take pictures
Speaker:of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue
Speaker:holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.
Speaker:The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us
Speaker:around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age,
Speaker:both perused by an exhausted looking teenager
Speaker:helplessly begging them to stop running.
Speaker:Everyone is wet
Speaker:and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation
Speaker:and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.
Speaker:The line goes into the marriage office.
Speaker:A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder,
Speaker:far more than it was built to have working it at once.
Speaker:A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up.
Speaker:She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point.
Speaker:“Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself,
Speaker:but today I’m acting as your guide.
Speaker:Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“
Speaker:The guy behind the counter
Speaker:has been there since six. It’s now 1:30.
Speaker:He’s still giddy with joy. He counts
Speaker:our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it,
Speaker:sends off the parts he needs to,
Speaker:and hands the rest back to us.
Speaker:“Alright, go to the Rotunda,
Speaker:they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony.
Speaker:Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.”
Speaker:“Can’t you just mail it to us?”
Speaker:“Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”
Speaker:We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
Speaker:If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill,
Speaker:you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda.
Speaker:There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered
Speaker:and are just processing people through as fast as they can.
Speaker:That’s for the people
Speaker:who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.
Speaker:There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who
Speaker:seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing.
Speaker:There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.
Speaker:We get directed to the second story, northside.
Speaker:The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses.
Speaker:Our marriage officiant is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me
Speaker:(and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't
Speaker:turn to my husband next to me and ask,
Speaker:but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)
Speaker:I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket.
Speaker:My pants have water stains up to the knees.
Speaker:My hair is still wet from the rain,
Speaker:I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s
Speaker:finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
Speaker:There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time.
Speaker:Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening.
Speaker:Relief that we’d made it.
Speaker:Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way
Speaker:and the hundreds to thousands
Speaker:who’d cheered for us generally.
Speaker:Then we're married.
Speaker:Then we get in line
Speaker:to get our license.
Speaker:It’s another hour.
Speaker:This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and
Speaker:goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.
Speaker:Mayor Newsom is not in
Speaker:today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday
Speaker:because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked
Speaker:“THANK YOU!”s that have been
Speaker:piled up against it.
Speaker:We make it to the marriage records office.
Speaker:I take a picture of my now husband
Speaker:standing in front of a case of the marriage records
Speaker:for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with
Speaker:lines.
Speaker:We get out, we head to the front entrance,
Speaker:and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.
Speaker:It's almost 3PM. —
Speaker:There are cheers,
Speaker:there’s rice thrown at us,
Speaker:there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love
Speaker:and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent.
Speaker:It’s no longer raining,
Speaker:just a light sprinkle,
Speaker:but there are still no protestors. There’s
Speaker:barely even any news vans.
Speaker:We make our way through the gauntlet,
Speaker:we get hands shaked,
Speaker:people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us.
Speaker:We hit the sidewalks,
Speaker:and we begin to limp our way
Speaker:back to the BART station.
Speaker:I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south,
Speaker:and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep
Speaker:when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously.
Speaker:“Hey. I just- I saw you guys,
Speaker:down at City Hall, and I just… I’m
Speaker:so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m-
Speaker:I’m just really glad,
Speaker:glad you could get to do this.”
Speaker:He shakes my hand,
Speaker:clasps it with both of his and shakes it.
Speaker:I thank him and he smiles and then
Speaker:hurries away as fast as he can without running.
Speaker:Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.
Speaker:We get back to our car and climb in.
Speaker:It’s 4:30 and we are starving. There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and
Speaker:have our first official meal as a married couple.
Speaker:We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco.
Speaker:We're all easy to pick out,
Speaker:what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.
Speaker:We get home about 6-7.
Speaker:We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row.
Speaker:We shower. We bundle ourselves up.
Speaker:We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit
Speaker:adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.
Speaker:We wake up the next day,
Speaker:Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court
Speaker:has rejected the petition
Speaker:to shut down the San Francisco weddings
Speaker:because the paperwork had a misplaced
Speaker:comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.
Speaker:The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month
Speaker:before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor
Speaker:Newsom’s marriages.
Speaker:My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention.
Speaker:They were flying into
Speaker:SFO about the same moment we were walking out of
Speaker:City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting
Speaker:and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders.
Speaker:“No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long!
Speaker:You did what you needed to do!
Speaker:I’ll just be there for the next one!” —
Speaker:It was just a piece of paper.
Speaker:Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight
Speaker:thirty days later.
Speaker:My philosophy at the time was
Speaker:“marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming
Speaker:what you already have.”
Speaker:But maybe it’s just societal
Speaker:weight, or ingrained culture, or something,
Speaker:but it was different after.
Speaker:The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is,
Speaker:“It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm.
Speaker:We were keeping each other above water,
Speaker:we were each other’s support.
Speaker:But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up
Speaker:to meet our feet.
Speaker:We were still in an ocean,
Speaker:still in the middle of a storm,
Speaker:but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet.
Speaker:We still supported each other,
Speaker:but there was this other thing
Speaker:that was also keeping our heads above the water.
Speaker:It was different.
Speaker:It was better. It made things more solid and real.
Speaker:I am forever grateful
Speaker:for all the forces and all the people
Speaker:who came together to make it possible.
Speaker:It’s been twenty years
Speaker:and we’re still together
Speaker:and still married.
Speaker:We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork.
Speaker:We’d done a private ceremony with
Speaker:proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection
Speaker:hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.
Speaker:Rushed. In a hurry.
Speaker:Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again
Speaker:if it passed. It did,
Speaker:but we were already married at that point,
Speaker:and they couldn’t negate it
Speaker:that time. Another few years after that,
Speaker:the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said
Speaker:"Fine! It's been legal in places and
Speaker:nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts.
Speaker:It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"
Speaker:And that was that. —
Speaker:When I was in highschool,
Speaker:in the late 90s,
Speaker:I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s.
Speaker:I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would
Speaker:ever be okay with it.
Speaker:I never expected to be getting married within five years.
Speaker:I never expected it to be legal nationwide
Speaker:before I’d barely started by 30s.
Speaker:I never thought I’d be in my 40s
Speaker:and it’d be such a non-issue
Speaker:that the conservative rabble rousers
Speaker:would’ve had to move
Speaker:onto other wedge issues altogether.
Speaker:I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband
Speaker:and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.
Speaker:I never thought I’d live in this world.
Speaker:And it’s twenty years later today.
Speaker:I wonder how our line buddies are doing.
Speaker:Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag
Speaker:will have graduated college by now.
Speaker:The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried
Speaker:would see him are probably married too now.
Speaker:Some of them to others of the same gender.
Speaker:I don’t have some
Speaker:greater message to make with all this.
Speaker:Other than, culture can shift suddenly
Speaker:in ways you can’t predict.
Speaker:For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering
Speaker:the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with
Speaker:all of you. The future we’re resigned to
Speaker:doesn’t have to be the one we live in.
Speaker:Society can shift faster than you think.
Speaker:The unimaginable of twenty years ago
Speaker:is the baseline reality of today.
Speaker:And always remember
Speaker:that the people who want to get married
Speaker:will show up by the thousands
Speaker:in rain that none of those
Speaker:who’re against it
Speaker:will brave. This was “My Super Illegal San Francisco Marriage, Twenty Years Later”
Speaker:by Beachfox, read for you by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:werewolf hitchhiker.
Speaker:You can find more stories on the web
Speaker:at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Happy Pride, and Thank you
Speaker:for listening to The Voice of Dog.
