Mountain GLBTQ Group

The New York Times

June 14, 2008
California Braces for ‘New Summer of Love’
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SAN FRANCISCO — The groom was shopping for the perfect diamond for his betrothed — the other groom. As Rey Almeida, a 47-year-old elementary school principal, perused the Equality Forever rings (a same-sex wedding special at 40 percent off if purchased from June 16 to June 26), he couldn’t help reflecting on the symbolism.

“We’ve been waiting for the right moment,” Mr. Almeida, 47, said of marrying his partner, Alan Pex, a 46-year-old accountant who was initially as standoffish as Mr. Big on “Sex in the City.” “Now there’s the possibility of a ring, a ring that says, I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you.’ ”

California is gearing up for the “new summer of love,” as it is being dubbed here: the legalization of same-sex marriage beginning at 5:01 p.m. Monday.

Unlike in Massachusetts, California’s new law does not limit marriages to residents of the state, thus resurrecting old postcard images of California as the promised land. But instead of Edenic orange groves, the new arrivals will be greeted with organic framboise ganaches, Russian River honeymoon canoe trips and Gay Palm Springs hotel packages with rose petals, Champagne, two souvenir pillows embroidered with the couples’ first names and aromatherapy candles at room check-in.

Faced with a wilted economy, water shortages and sticker shock at the gasoline pump, many California businesses are welcoming “the dinks” (double income, no kids) with open arms. “It’s basically a godsend,” said Daniel Doiron, the general manager of the Ingleside Inn in Palm Springs, which is offering honeymoon specials from $479 bargain basement (boutonnieres, 15-minute wedding, 20 guests) to the “Elizabeth Taylor ” at $29,999 (poolside villas, wedding cake and reception, ice sculptures, flowers, sit-down dinner for 200 and three nights in the honeymoon suite). “We’re just blessed to help.” Ten couples from New York, Las Vegas and Phoenix have signed up for the options.

According to Community Marketing Inc., a gay and lesbian market research firm here, four of the top 10 gay travel destinations are in California, with gay men and lesbians spending $64 billion a year on domestic leisure travel. The potential windfall of same-sex marriage was underscored this week in a study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, which estimated that over three years, same-sex nuptials would contribute $684 million to the state’s wedding industry and $64 million to the state budget.

The study also predicted that half of California’s 102,639 gay couples would marry over the next three years, as would 68,000 from out of state (including 12,000 from New York).

Among them are Jeffrey Dreiblatt, 47, a Web designer, and Willie Walker, 44, a legal assistant, from Brooklyn, who fell in love in the Borough Hall subway station 15 years ago while standing in line to buy tokens. They plan to honeymoon at an inn in Sonoma County after marrying in San Francisco on Aug. 8.

“When I was younger, I didn’t understand the point of getting married and replicating heterosexual life,” said Mr. Dreiblatt. “But over the years, my thinking has changed. The law in California and the implications for New York spoke to us and said, ‘now is the time.’ ”

Many gay men and lesbians are taking a wait-and-see attitude, said the Rev. Blane Ellsworth, an independent nondenominational minister in Napa who also has a Web site, Enchanting Elopements, listing equality-sensitive businesses. There is still the memory of the euphoria, and letdown, in 2004, when nearly 4,000 same-sex couples stood in line to marry in San Francisco, only to have the marriages nullified by the state five months later.

Mr. Ellsworth said those he has dealt with “are pretty smart business people.”

“They’re saying if they’re going to invest in a nice service and wedding, ‘I’m going to wait until it’s a sure thing,’ ” he said.

“We’re hoping our rights don’t get taken away again,” said Megan Marteny, 23, who was sipping Champagne one recent night with her partner at a wedding expo held by the Golden Gate Business Association, a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender chamber of commerce.

In contrast to the experience in 2004, which had a spontaneous, storm-the-castle, free-tickets-to-the-Grateful-Dead quality, with hundreds of couples standing in line in the rain overnight, there is a palpable sense of impending permanence this time.

Ed Schultz, a social worker who became domestic partner to Steve Berlin last year, plans to go to City Hall on July 10. “Marriage has a certain dignity,” Mr. Schultz said. “When I go to work and say, ‘I’m domestically partnered,’ that’s something different than saying, ‘I’m married.’ ”

Charlotte Fiorito, a wedding photographer who specializes in same-sex unions, says she did “the 2004 crush in our rain ponchos. Now, a lot of people are planning the kind of weddings they have been waiting their whole lives for.”

Among them are James H. Bainton and Jeffrey Rueda, both 40 and doctors, who were about to send out letterpress invitations to their commitment ceremony at a Napa Valley vineyard when the Supreme Court ruled last month that gay men and lesbians had a constitutional right to marry. The invitation to their “commitment ceremony” was quickly changed to “wedding.”

“We’re still in the shaping mode,” Mr. Bainton said of the nuptials, with 100 guests, to take place beside a pond in fields of sage and lavender at the height of August tomato season. “This increases the meaning of it. It feels like we’re sitting here making history.”

While not quite a gold rush, businesses like Enchanted Elopements and myqueerwedding.com are popping up.

And across the state, there is a sense of the birth of new rituals. Steve Pougnet, the openly gay mayor of Palm Springs, plans to hold a citywide “marriage festival” on June 21, having been deputized two weeks ago by the county clerk. He has two dozen weddings lined up and is planning his own in the fall. Jan Felshin, 76, and Edrie Ferdun, 71, retired professors who live on Fire Island in New York, have been together 49 years. At their wedding in Mandeville Canyon, in Los Angeles, they will be joined by four other lesbian couples.

Not surprising, along with new rituals have come new etiquette questions. Couples whose marriages were nullified in 2004, like Joyce Feltham and Dorian Leslie Duren of Palo Alto, are wondering how to handle their “encore” wedding, a new breed here as couples embark on their second or third public pledge to the same person. “How do we tell people who brought gifts the first time not to feel obligated to bring another one?” Ms. Duren asked.

Peggy Post, the etiquette expert and author, who is based in Vermont, said the legalization of same-sex weddings, if it held, was bound to bring about changes in the ritual, the same way, she said, that brides now walk down the aisle with stepfathers, not just their fathers, and that a white dress has come to signify “the color of joy,” not just virginity.

So it will be too, when same-sex couples are pronounced “spouses for life.”

Armistead Maupin, one of the city’s most famous authors, became married in Vancouver, British Columbia, last year to his partner, Christopher Turner, and will probably marry him again in California, he said.

“Straight people have grown up thinking they’re entitled to a fairy-tale wedding,” Mr. Maupin said. “One of our great advantages as gay people is that we’ve been forced to forge relationships without that fantasy. In doing so, we’ve figured out what’s at the core.”

He continued, “Our relationships supported us during the AIDS epidemic. We know what it means to have another person stand by you.”

From the Los Angeles Times
Some gays are asking themselves: 'I do?'
The recent California Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage produces both community euphoria and individual ambivalence.
By Mary Engel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 15, 2008

In the weeks since the California Supreme Court's historic ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, gay men and lesbians have hugged, kissed, popped bottles of bubbly and danced in the streets.

Some have also looked themselves in the mirror and asked: "I do?"

Beneath the widespread community euphoria at having the right to marry lies some individual ambivalence about actually doing so.

Yes, there will be a rush of weddings beginning Tuesday, the day most counties will start issuing marriage licenses (a few are to begin Monday night). But there will also be questions, though not always voiced aloud:

Is this the right person? Is this the right time? Is marriage right for me?

"Up until now, we've never had to think about those questions," said the Rev. Neil G. Thomas, senior pastor at Metropolitan Community Church Los Angeles, which was founded to minister to the gay community when many mainline churches wouldn't.

Gay couples have long held commitment ceremonies, registered as domestic partners or just grown old together in lifelong committed relationships.

But marriage?

"In a sense, it changes nothing," said Jeffrey Chernin, a family therapist who works with both gay and straight couples.

"But in another sense, it changes everything."

Some couples welcome the change. Ron Elecciri, 43, who works in television development, and his partner of 11 years, attorney Andy Birnbaum, 38, have been waiting for this ruling since the high court nullified their 2004 San Francisco marriage.

"Both Andy and I did not hesitate to say we're going to be married again," Elecciri said. "The only decision we're not together on is whether we want a big wedding reception or not."

Other couples face bigger divides. Marcy Israel, a San Luis Obispo wedding photographer, would like to marry her partner of 13 years now that she finally can. But she knows her partner is not as enthusiastic.

"We haven't had a real in-depth discussion yet, but she questions the whole idea of marriage for anyone," Israel said.

She said her partner "feels no need of outward reinforcement for what she feels." Israel, on the other hand, is "more romantic and also more political. I feel that the more gay couples in committed relationships who take this step, the harder it will be to say sorry, you hundred thousand people, but you're no longer married."

One West Hollywood professional said that even though he has been with his partner for seven years, and they're shopping for a house together, "there's a little ambivalence about marriage."

"It all came up so suddenly," said the man, who asked not to be identified because he is reluctant to have intimate details of his personal life "popping up on Google."

"Straight people enter into dating and courtship with marriage always out there as a possibility throughout the relationship," he said. "It wasn't even a possibility for us, and then all of a sudden there's this looming question: Do we want to get married? It's this whole new commitment I hadn't really thought about."

For gay couples, he said, the decision carries pressure to act quickly, since marriage will no longer be an option if a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage passes in November.

"I think this whole marriage thing is causing more anxiety and fights among gay couples than anything has before," he said.

Ken Howard, a psychotherapist who works with gay men in West Hollywood, said that for some gay couples marriage raises significant financial issues.

Although marriage brings benefits that can be a boon, especially for low-income couples, it also brings shared responsibilities and debts.

Some financial advisors, for example, counsel gay couples not to register as domestic partners if one or both partners have HIV and could leave the other on the hook for potentially catastrophic medical bills.

"For legal and financial reasons, a couple may not want to be legally tied," Howard said.

Of course, there's always the prenuptial agreement.

Some gay couples already sign such agreements when they register as domestic partners, said Steven Stolar, a family attorney in Beverly Hills. But in the excitement and emotion surrounding the recent court ruling, not all couples may think about such practical matters.

"All of a sudden, half of their earnings will be their partners' earnings," Stolar said. "And if they want to leave each other, it's not as easy as just packing a bag and moving out."

For some, marriage may not be politically palatable. Just as heterosexuals in the 1960s and '70s began to challenge marriage as an institution, some gay people resist adopting the mainstream model of marriage and children.

The option of marriage is in some ways a Rorschach test, revealing generational as well as cultural divides. Segments of the community still equate gay liberation with sexual freedom or see marriage as a sexist institution that oppresses women. Others have children, joint mortgages and all the accouterments of mainstream culture.

But few expect such differences to be aired publicly, at least until after the November election.

"With this anti-gay initiative on the ballot, you're seeing the community coming together like never before," said Torie Osborn, an advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former director of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

If the experience of gay-marriage pioneers in the Netherlands and Massachusetts is any guide, those who marry in California will be for the most part longtime couples in their 40s and 50s.

But that is also the group with the most ambivalence about marriage, said M.V. Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute of Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA. Badgett estimates that in the first three years, only about half of California's more than 100,000 same-sex couples noted in the 2000 census will marry -- assuming the constitutional amendment doesn't pass.

Surveys have found that the younger they are, the more enthusiastic gay men and lesbians tend to be about marriage. But it's often later in life, when practical and legal considerations concerning having children or buying property come into play, that people take the leap.

In the Netherlands and Massachusetts, people's views on marriage shifted over time, Badgett said. Lesbians, for example, began to think how marriage between two women -- or two men -- could change an institution they considered inequitable.

Perhaps because he runs adult education programs and coming-out groups for the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, Ruben Romo is comfortable with the idea of taking his time and sorting out his feelings.

Romo, 41, and his partner, Mark Beaty, 40, the center's grants manager, have been together five years, but they took each step slowly. Romo had a rule: He'd move in with someone only after the relationship had lasted a year. Then he found out that Beaty's rule was two years. Three years passed before they finally set up house.

"There's no question in my mind that at some point we'll get married," Romo said. "But we've seen people make that decision without giving it the weight we think it deserves. We see marriage as something we take incredibly seriously."

mary.engel@latimes.com

Path to the altar: Stories of people in same-sex marriage fight
By Howard Mintz, Mary Anne Ostrom and Mike Swift
Mercury News

Did it begin in a furtive San Francisco apartment in the 1950s, or with a young girl's struggle to understand the concept of love in the '90s, or at President Bush's 2004 State of the Union speech?

The national struggle over gay marriage is taking a momentous turn this week with the first legal same-sex weddings in California. Those weddings could advance full marriage equality for gays and lesbians. Or those ceremonies could, as opponents say, mark a first step toward California voters preserving traditional marriage in November.

Whichever fork history chooses, this will be an emotional week for California: Dozens of weddings that begin at 5:01 p.m. Monday will multiply into thousands of marriages across the state Tuesday.

Here are six stories of the people who had profound influence in bringing California to this crossroad.

'Phyllis and Del'

Same-sex nuptials

in San Francisco

For decades, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were little-known outside America's lesbian movement, which they helped launch in San Francisco in 1955.

That was until 2004, when a moving photo of their post-wedding embrace shot the couple to fame overnight. Longtime gay-marriage supporters and a then-brand-new mayor of San Francisco hatched a plan to make "Phyllis and Del" the face of same-sex marriage, as the first of more than 4,000 gay couples were issued marriage licenses in the city.

They correctly figured the couple, now in their 80s,
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would begin to bust stereotypes and bring new converts to the cause.

Now, virtually everyone in the gay community, and many outside it, refer to them simply as "Phyllis and Del."

As they were during San Francisco's 2004 experiment with same-sex marriages, the couple will be the first ones married in the city. At 5:01 p.m. Monday, surrounded by a group of 75 friends, family members, supporters and politicians, they will be wed at City Hall in the winter of their lives.

This time, not only will their marriage be legal, but they also will have their own rings to exchange. Their 2004 nuptials, done in secret to avoid protests, were so hastily thrown together that the couple had to borrow rings.

When Martin, 87, and Lyon, 83, moved to San Francisco together in 1955, there was no safe public place for lesbians to get together. So, they and a few others formed a social club called the Daughters of Bilitis, meeting in private, away from dangerous bars and harassing police. Martin became president.

Five decades later, they became plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to legalization of same-sex marriage in California.

Lyon described to the court the outpouring of support in 2004, how 2,000 people turned out for their reception and calls of congratulations came from as far away as Australia and Colombia.

She and Martin only hoped to live long enough to marry again, should the court ever rule in their favor.

"Our love and lives together deserve celebrating and celebrating again. And though we have little need for more kitchen gadgets," she wrote, "we do believe a government acknowledgment of our fundamental constitutional rights would be a fitting gift."

- Mary Anne Ostrom

What is love?

Girl's question led

to Mass. court fight

Long before the landmark court decisions in California and Massachusetts, a young girl in Boston was struggling to understand a John Lennon song.

It was about love. To help her little girl understand, Annie Goodridge's mother asked the 4-year-old to name some people who loved each other.

"I named the neighbors, and then, like our friends, my friends' parents, who were all straight," Annie recalled.

And then her parents, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, asked their daughter, "Why didn't you name us?"

"I said, 'Because they're not married,' " said Annie, now 12. "I used to think that only people who were married loved each other."

As much as anything, Julie and Hillary Goodridge said their daughter's uncertainty about whether they loved each other prompted the couple to sue for the right of gays and lesbians to marry.

The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in Goodridge vs. Dept. of Public Health cleared the way for the nation's first legal gay marriages. After 17 years together, Julie and Hillary Goodridge were among the first to wed in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004.

But two years later, the couple, who married amid the glare and pressure of being the first, separated. Tuesday, the Goodridges will be looking backward as well as forward.

"It forces the rest of society to look at gays and lesbians as equal," said Julie Goodridge.

"It's huge, absolutely, because now it's not isolated in one state," Hillary Goodridge said.

Annie, meanwhile, says her views have changed a lot since she was that young girl. Now, she believes there can be love between any two people.

- Mike Swift

State of the Union

Bush speech prompted

Newsom's 2004 move

Gavin Newsom says it was George W. Bush, of all people, who pushed him to start performing marriages for gays and lesbians in 2004. Just 12 days after becoming San Francisco's youngest mayor in a century, Newsom went to Washington to hear Bush's State of the Union speech.

Fired up about a 2003 Massachusetts court ruling favoring gay marriage, Bush declared: "Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."

Newsom bristled.

Three weeks later, the straight, Catholic, then-married Santa Clara University graduate issued the decree that prompted the nation's first mass gay marriages.

Over 29 days, 4,037 couples got licenses before the California Supreme Court halted the Winter of Love.

Newsom says he acted because of his obligation to rectify the civil rights issue of his generation. Brash and impulsive, he also embraced the notoriety, thumbing his nose at even his own Democratic Party leaders who blamed him for reigniting the nation's cultural wars.

After last month's state Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, he is no less defiant: "As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It's inevitable. This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not."

Polls show more California voters embracing the idea of gay marriage as Newsom prepares for his next quest: a widely speculated run for governor in 2010.

In 2004, he often cited his own marriage to describe a right he believed all adults, regardless of sexual orientation, should have. But that rocky relationship ended in divorce two years later.

Monday evening, Newsom once again will be in the international spotlight when he kicks off legally sanctioned gay marriages by officiating the ceremony of Martin and Lyon.

And, in a sweet coincidence, six weeks later he will be saying his own vows, when he marries his actress girlfriend, Jennifer Siebel. Only that ceremony will be on a private Montana ranch, 1,500 miles away from home and prying media.

- Mary Anne Ostrom

Ballot measure

Marriage 'dishonored,'

group's leader says

Randy Thomasson won't be angry this week. He won't feel discouraged either. He will feel a sense of resolve.

"You never look forward to disasters. Pearl Harbor was a terrible thing, but it did bring the United States into World War II, which was needed," said Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based Campaign for Children and Families, which opposes gay marriage.

"The manifestation of homosexual marriages will be the trigger for voter outrage and voter action in November," he said.

For years, Thomasson has been at the center of a host of moral issues in California, ranging from legislation that would restrict parents from spanking their children, to efforts by atheists to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

But those fights pale in importance, he said, to November's vote on a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage, which he said goes to the foundation of family and society. That fight, he said, starts in earnest Tuesday.

Same-sex marriage, Thomasson said, will confuse children who will grow up not knowing whether they should marry someone of their own gender or the opposite gender.

It, too, insults a traditional institution, he said. "Marriage between a man and a woman has been dishonored," said Thomasson, who is married.

He said that when "Bride and Groom" switches to "Party A and Party B," the sight of gay people "parading themselves" with new marriage licenses will galvanize California voters to support a ban.

"I just plan on being a cheerleader to remind people they don't have to feel powerless," he said. "We are still a government of the people, and not a government of the judges."

- Mike Swift

Swing vote

Chief justice's

place in history

From the moment gay couples began descending on San Francisco City Hall to marry in 2004, it was inevitable that the question of their legal rights would ultimately land across the street, on the desk of California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George.

Later that year, George wrote an opinion voiding thousands of the San Francisco marriages, finding that the mayor had overstepped his authority by issuing the marriage licenses in defiance of state law. But George's court all but invited a lawsuit that would tackle the central issue - whether California's ban on same-sex marriage was constitutional.

In May, George provided the answer, this time writing an opinion finding the ban was not constitutional. A few days later, he recalled those February weddings across the street in San Francisco's civic center. George knew his ruling made history.

"I certainly couldn't help but think that," the chief justice said during a recent interview with the Mercury News, just days after he wrote the 4-3 decision. "I'd seen some of the history before, when they were lining up to be married."

As much as gay-marriage opponents have now tried to portray George as a liberal villain, his path to the center of this week's same-sex marriages was hardly predictable. In fact, the civil rights community had been privately nervous about how George and his colleagues would view gay marriage from the earliest days of the legal battle.

A Republican appointee on a court dominated by Republicans, the 68-year-old George has often been a swing vote in the court's closest cases. This time, his vote - and his sweeping ruling - carried the day for advocates of same-sex marriages.

George did not have a comment on this week's upcoming gay nuptials. But he'll have a perfect view of couples arriving at City Hall from his office window. There, he'll be able to observe yet more history in the making.

- Howard Mintz

'I'm equal'

S.F. attorney plans

her own wedding

Terry Stewart stood before the California Supreme Court this spring, confidently fielding rapid-fire questions as she tried to secure the legal right for gays and lesbians to marry. Her voice resonated throughout the packed courtroom. The San Francisco chief deputy city attorney was leading the legal fight to bring down the state's ban on gay marriage.

But now, as California's first same-sex marriages are about to begin, she sounds different on the phone. It's not about the law now. It's personal.

Her voice cracks.

She begins to cry.

"When you're a lawyer, you think you're tough and you think, 'I haven't suffered that greatly by being openly gay,' " Stewart said last week. "You stuff your feelings of being unequal away, and pretend it isn't there.

"I came out 26 years ago," she continued.

"For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm equal to everybody else. It's almost like it is unleashing this pain."

There has been a host of lawyers responsible for the successful legal challenge to the state's gay marriage ban, notably Stewart's boss, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who pushed the case, and Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. But the 51-year-old Stewart was lead attorney before the state Supreme Court.

From that day back in March, Stewart had a good feeling. In fact, when she finished arguing before the justices, she returned to her seat, turned to a colleague and said: "I think we're going to win this case."

She did win. And on Aug. 31, Stewart will marry Carole Scagnetti, her partner of 16 years.

- Howard Mintz

Dozens of gay couples wed in Calif. after ruling
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer

Dozens of gay couples were married Monday after a landmark ruling making California the second state to allow same-sex nuptials went into effect.

At least five county clerks around the state extended their hours to issue marriage licenses, and many same-sex couples got married on the spot.

"These are not folks who just met each other last week and said, `Let's get married.' These are folks who have been together in some cases for decades," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

The May 15 California Supreme Court ruling overturning bans on same-sex marriage took effect at 5:01 p.m.

The really big rush to the altar was not expected to take place until Tuesday, which is when most counties planned to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of couples from around the country are expected to seize the opportunity to make their unions official in the eyes of the law.

In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California's one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at the wedding of Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84.

Newsom picked the couple for the only ceremony in City Hall Monday in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement. More than 600 same-sex couples have made appointments to get marriage licenses in San Francisco over the next 10 days.

Martin sat in her wheelchair during the ceremony in Newsom's office, which was open to a few elected officials, reporters and friends.

After the mayor pronounced them "spouses for life," the couple kissed, drawing huge applause.

Newsom called officiating the wedding "this extraordinary and humbling gift."

Meanwhile outside City Hall, a crowd of well-wishers gathered to wish the happy couple congratulations.

A handful of people opposed to gay marriage were also there. Some held signs with statements including "Jesus said go and sin no more."

Just hours before the ruling went into effect, a conservative legal group asked a Sacramento court to order the California agency that oversees marriages to stop issuing gender-neutral marriage licenses.

Gary Kreep of the San Diego County-based United States Justice Foundation said his group filed a petition on behalf of five county supervisors from Yuba, Stanislaus, Nevada and Sutter counties. The petition argues the state Department of Public Health failed to hold legally required public hearings on the licenses and claims legislators must amend state marriage laws before the licenses are valid.

A hearing on the matter was scheduled for Tuesday.

Also Monday, a conservative Christian law firm and a church joined in faxing letters to county clerk offices, telling them that they do not have to do work related to same-sex marriages if it violates their religious beliefs.

Despite the last minute legal efforts, dozens of same-sex couples were married in ceremonies at city offices in San Francisco, Alameda, Sonoma, Los Angeles and Yolo counties.

Derek Norman, 23 and Robert Blaudow, 39, from Memphis, Tenn., were in the Bay Area for a conference and decided to get married at the Alameda County clerk's office.

"We might wait a long time in Tennessee, so this is our chance," Blaudow said.

First in line to pick up a marriage license in Sonoma were Melanie Phoenix, 47, and Terry Robinson, 48, of Santa Rosa. They have been together for almost 26 years and plan to wed in August.

"It's an historic occasion," Phoenix said. "I never believed it was really possible until Gavin Newsom took the first step in 2004."

In February 2004, Newsom decided to challenge California's marriage laws by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

In the month that followed, more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married before a judge acting on petitions brought by gay marriage opponents halted the city's spree. The state Supreme Court ultimately voided those unions, but two dozen couples sued and those lawsuits led the same court last month to overturn California's ban on gay marriage.

Among the plaintiffs in those lawsuits was a couple married Monday in a Jewish ceremony in front of the Beverly Hills courthouse.

The ceremony between Robin Tyler and Diane Olson was broadcast live on three newscasts in Los Angeles.

The couple wept and pressed their foreheads together, and onlookers whooped as the marriage became valid.

Rabbi Denise Eger saluted the couple for "these many years of coming to this very place and standing on these courthouse steps year after year of being denied this right, this civil right."