I never took off the ring — but now we’re legal again!

Posted on May 19, 2008
Filed Under Gay News Blog

A little over four years ago, I swung by a jeweler and bought a $40 gold band, rushing to an event I’d never expected would happen — my wedding. Martha and I, who had been together for 11 years then, were married, with our daughter as witness, at San Francisco’s City Hall, in the great Valentine’s Day uprising of affirmative civil disobedience.

Along with 4,000 other couples, we received what many of us hadn’t known we were looking for: legal families, a laundry list of new rights and obligations, and the teary, cheering welcome of our fellow citizens.

Strangers kissed us and thrust carnations into our arms. A little girl, on the steps of City Hall, shyly gave my bride a handwritten note, in pink magic marker, reading “Congratulations on your marriage.” My mother was so happy she almost wept when I called her with the news. My sister yelped with joy. My brother’s voice cracked. “Oh, Sara,” he said. Then, “I guess we’re gonna have to buy you a kitchen appliance, now that you’re legal.”

But our next-door neighbor, Isabel, who was 6, looked confused when her parents ran into our backyard whooping congratulations. “I thought Sara and Martha weremarried,” she said.

See I never took off the ring — but now we’re legal again!

By Sara Miles