Gay Marriages-Same Sex Weddings-Lesbian Marriages

Breaking ground is one of the words one will think about when Del Martin, 87 and Phyllis Lyon 84, get married, Monday, shortly after 5 p.m. PT at San Francisco’s City Hall.

Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin, founded the nation’s first lesbian organization. And were the first to participate in a 2004 challenge of California laws against same sex marriage, exchanging wedding vows only to see the ceremony voided later.

The march to matrimony has taken a long time for the couple, but marriage wasn’t always the goal.

They met in the early 1950s in Seattle, Washington, where they worked as editors of construction trade publications, before falling in love and buying a house together in San Francisco later that decade.

In 1955, they founded the nation’s first lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis.

In the 1960s, they tried to get California lawmakers to introduce anti~discrimination bills and successfully persuaded some police officers to stop harassing gays and lesbians at bars.

They didn’t give a damn about getting married. They just wanted to get a law that said you can’t fire us because we are gay when they first started this long road.

In 2003, filmmaker Joan E. Biren released “No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon,” a documentary focusing on the couple’s activism and relationship.

When the couple were asked how do you keep a relationship going for decades, they simply replied that “they had no particular secret and if we had a secret, we would have written a book and made a million dollars. We love each other, we have similar interests. Our lives were very similar even before we met.”

In 2004, San Francisco officials allowed gay couples in the city to wed, prompting a flood of applicants to the City Hall clerk’s office. The officials chose Del Lyon, then 80, and Phyllis Martin, then 83, to take the first vows. It is only fair that they have another chance, on Monday.

The California Supreme Court on May 15, 2008, struck down the state’s ban on same sex marriage, paving the way for Del Lyon and Phyllis Martin and other same sex couples to marry in the state as soon as the ruling takes effect Monday evening.

Opponents have said they’ve collected enough signatures to call for a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. The California secretary of state must verify the signatures to clear the way for a November vote on the proposed amendment.

Good luck Del Lyon and Phyllis Martin…you two are path finders and makers.
..you did it.

There are some of you that might think…this is not a good thing. But I, for one, do not think that the church should be brought into government.

There is change in the air…a black man is running for the Presidency, there was a woman that ran against him and change is a good thing.

Someone sexual preferences should not be an issue for the state, city or the nation. Everyone deserves a right to be happy and have legal rights of and over their partner. My dad would have said…”why shouldn’t they be just as miserable as the rest of us, married fools.”

~The Baby Boomer Queen~