Why You Should Give A Damn!

Newsletter Archive

Newsletter #8, February, 2006

Across the Marriage License Counter

by Davina Kotulski, Ph.D.

In September of 1998, a day or two before our wedding ceremony with our family and friends, Molly and I went down to Oakland City Hall. We wanted to pick up our marriage license to be signed by our celebrant after the ceremony, but eight years ago, just like now, a marriage license was not an option for us. Instead, we registered as Domestic Partners with the City of Oakland (this was before Migden’s state registry existed). It cost $25 and came with no rights or benefits. Had one of us been a city employee we would have been able to put the other on our health insurance plan. This registry was the only way to legally acknowledge our marriage to one another. Almost eight years later, we are still trying top have our marriage legally recognized.

In the almost ten years that Molly and I have been together we have purchased a home together, buried two grandparents, a sister, and our cat, watched 2 out of 3 of our brothers get married, welcomed two nieces into the family, and worked hard to make marriage equality a reality in California, in the United States. We are still not legally married.

On Valentine’s Day this year we went to four counties (Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Alameda) to four different recorder’s officer to ask for a marriage license. The rejection is still upsetting. I can’t tell you how it feels to watch others happily granted their licenses, while Molly and I together for ten years, our lives, families, and finances intermingled are not treated equally.

This year however we were met with more support. Clerks read statements that their Board of Supervisors had passed resolutions in support of marriage equality and that they wished they could give us a marriage license and you could feel their discomfort at having to say no. The tide is changing. And when we approached the counter at SF for what would have been the sixth year in a row if we hadn’t been up in Shasta County asking for a marriage license in Redding last year, Margaret Tseng, the Assistant to the Director Deputy County Clerk, had tears in her eyes. We handed her some tulips and we looked at one another all deeply feeling the absurdity and cruelty of the current marriage laws. “We’ll see you next year Margaret.” We told her, knowing that we will be coming back again and again until we can be like those other couples at the marriage license counter excited to pledge our vows and able to tie the knot legally.

Please consider making a donation to Marriage Equality USA and helping us get one step closer to the altar.

http://www.marriageequality.org/database/donate.php

With liberty, justice, and marriage equality for all!

Davina Kotulski, Ph.D. Executive Director, Marriage Equality USA Author of Why You Should Give A Damn About Gay Marriage (510) 332-0973 davina@marriageequality.org http://www.whygaymarriage.com