My colleague Seth Schoen took a walk yesterday down to the San Francisco city hall and watched the hundreds of lesbian and gay couple in various states of marriage. His first-person account is touching and sent a shiver up my spine.
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 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.