Valentine's Day, or, thank you, Mayor Newsom
As is well known, Mayor Newsom directed city offices to begin marrying same-sex couples in San Francisco late last week. I was walking down the street in the Mission on Friday and heard people talking about the scene at City Hall: they were saying that people from all kinds of city offices had volunteered to work overtime, to come in on the weekend, to be deputized as assistant clerks or commissioners so that they could marry as many people as humanly possible. To hear the passersby tell it, the staff down at City Hall had risen as one with joy at Mayor Newsom's instruction and volunteered to do everything in their power to carry it out.
I imagined volunteers passing Gatorade to weary clerks who had been on their feet marrying people for fourteen hours straight (no pun intended). It must have been like a marathon, I thought.
Saturday was Valentine's Day. I already had a plan to go out during the day (I don't type on Saturdays, so I have free time as the world understands free time) and it struck me from the front-page newspaper headlines that there was history being made in my own city. So I thought I would go down to City Hall and see it happen.
Zack decided to join me, and we took a long walk -- from our home in the Mission all the way to City Hall, and thereafter all the way to the Castro, and thereafter all the way home, with additional detours on foot for meals and buying pencils (which is a story in itself). We made it to City Hall by mid-afternoon and right away saw the TV trucks outside: first CNN and then the local station KRON-4. The main entrance to City Hill had been fitted with a red carpet and people were milling around with cameras looking absolutely ecstatic.
Zack ran up to a couple of men who were wearing "freedom to marry" stickers and holding a lot of paperwork and grinning. "Did you two just get married in there?" Zack asked.
"Yes, yes we did!" said the men.
"Congratulations!" said Zack, shaking their hands vigorously. "Congratulations! Happy wedding!"
I ran up and shook their hands too and thought that we had already seen history. "We came up from Los Angeles today as soon as we heard the news", one of the men said. They must have gotten on the road at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning -- with, as we could see, their entire immediate families.
We proceeded around the building to the other entrance to see what was going on. A police or sheriff's officer was standing at the back of an incredibly long line that stretched just shy of half-way around the building. He was arguing with some people at the back of the line. To be precise, they were arguing with him and he was apologizing to them. "The line is closed, ma'am. It's not my decision, I'm just carrying out the orders I was given. The end of the line is there and nobody else is allowed to line up today. You can come back in the morning."
Two women in tears were clearly the most upset at this. "The Supervisor said I could still line up, he said we should just get in line. I just talked to the Supervisor and he said I would still be allowed to line up." (San Francisco City Council members are called Supervisors. It's like saying "the Senator". It's like saying "Officer, the Senator told me I could get married here". It's a heavy invocation of higher authority around here.)
"Ma'am, it's not up to me. I was told to close the line here."
"You're saying we can't get married today. You're saying we can't go in and get married. I don't understand."
"I'm sorry, ma'am. Excuse me, sir, the line is closed for today. No one else can get in line. That's it. No sir, the line is closed."
We walked around the side of the line and saw hundreds of same-sex couples in all states of dress (punk to tuxedo to family heirloom dress to just-off-the-street-in-work-attire). One couple wore yarmulkes and carried a siddur; another couple looked like ordained ministers, but I didn't know for sure of which Christian denomination. (It must be one willing to ordain gay women.) At the back of City Hall, the line was making its way through the door past a group of about half a dozen well-wishers with big pink signs. They looked like high school students. One of them was carrying an American flag with gay rights symbols in place of the stars. (Oddly enough, San Francisco regular Frank Chu was demonstrating too, with his usual sign that had nothing to do with same-sex marriage -- instead about galaxies, a rocket society, and impeaching former U.S. presidents. I was pretty sure he was just trying to get on TV with his message. You see him frequently in the Financial District.)
Zack and I walked straight through the door and into City Hall. As soon as we made it clear that we weren't in the line and weren't trying to sneak into the line, everyone let us through. We had to go through security, but almost no one other than the newlyweds-to-be was trying to get in to the building, so it was extremely easy.
Taking a back way, we ended up on the second floor where we heard loud and frequent applause coming from elsewhere in the building. We walked down a hallway and ran into the family of a straight couple (!) who had chosen to get married at City Hall on Valentine's Day waiting to use a restroom. They told Zack that all marriages that day were being performed up on the fourth floor, so we took the elevator up to the fourth floor (crammed full of couples with their marriage licenses, and again in a wide variety of fashions).
On the fourth floor, volunteers were directing everyone to the appropriate officiants out on the balconies that overlook the grand central gallery. Zack and I seemed to be the only people no associated with a particular couple, so we just charged on through, telling a guard that we just wanted to watch some weddings. All of a sudden we were out on the balcony with about twenty-five couples and their families and four or five slightly harried but extremely cheerful officiants. Someone down on the floor of the gallery started to play the piano.
The balcony opposite ours was set up in the same general way: officiants, couples, families. We heard frequent applause as people there were pronounced "spouses for life", and shortly the same thing happened right in front of us, perhaps three or four feet from where we stood. There was no privacy, and there was merely a basic decorum; nothing was ornate or elaboratively choreographed. The emphasis seemed to be on speed with appropriate respect. (One couple carried signs saying that they had been together for 18 years and had wanted to be married the whole time. Dan Bern says "I know how I hate to wait / Like even for a bus or something / An important phone call / So I can just imagine..." but of course I can't imagine. There is also the matter of the litigation against the City and the effort to prevent it from performing any more of these marriages -- which is why, I think, the two women at the end of the line were in tears.)
Zack and I applauded for the couples as they were married, and shook hands with them. The couples were as diverse in age as they were in dress: I saw a pair of women get married and was sure they were younger than I am. And I saw and was most touched by several weddings of people who had likely been waiting even longer than 18 years. Two women of my mother's age, or a little older, were married right in front of me, and they started to cry. I almost started to cry, too.
We did see history. We saw a dozen or two dozen people get married on Valentine's Day, who all very badly wanted to and who got their chance.
A journalist in the hallway said "When I got married, my wife made me sit around and plan the wedding for months and months. She made me work out every detail. So I'm kind of jealous or kind of frustrated that people would just wake up in the morning and get married. But if you look into these people's eyes, you don't want to deny them this."
SF Gate has pictures that look pretty similar to what we saw.