Gay, married and outlawed

The questions and answers volleyed back and forth last week during the California Supreme Court’s televised proceedings on Prop 8, the state’s recently enacted ban against gay marriage.

And in a dark classroom at Chapman University, watching it all with a focused intensity, was law student Tiffany Chang.

In Chang’s view, the discussion was riveting. Did Prop. 8 simply “take away the label of marriage,” as one justice put it? Chang has heard all of the arguments, including those that say that same sex couples enjoy domestic partnership rights in California, so why insist on the designation of “marriage.”

You could say there was twice as much at stake for Chang, who tracks the legal debate for reasons both scholarly and personal.

Two years ago, in front of friends and family in Long Beach, Chang and her partner Lindsey Etheridge exchanged marriage vows in an unofficial, non-legally binding ceremony. Then, exactly a year later, on July 14, 2008, during the short window when same-sex marriages were legal here in California, Chang and Etheridge filed for “official marriage paperwork.” Then they married in a legal ceremony.

Chang says the event was life changing.

“We were in the clerk’s office and there were people there we don’t know, but they represented the government, validating our relationship,” says Chang, 28. “After it was all done, that sense of security, it was tenfold at least.

“I never could have known what that felt like, to truly be equal in our society,” she adds. “I don’t think you know what that feels like until you’ve got it.”

Chang was part of a “friend of the court” brief filed with the state’s Supreme Court in support of those who have legally challenged Prop. 8. And, in her declaration, she elaborated that on the day “I walked out with my head held higher than I thought was even possible.”

The brief was drafted by attorneys Katherine Baird Darmer and Ronald Steiner, who are also law professors at Chapman, and includes declarations from other people connected to Chapman, as well as from members of the Orange County Equality Coalition, a community group that says it educates and advocates for marriage equality in California.

For Chang, Prop. 8 isn’t just a matter of nomenclature; it’s a matter of denying a minority group the rights afforded to all others. Since the law passed in November, Chang has been speaking out in public. She says she’s come to realize that until a person is treated like a second-class citizen it’s difficult for them to understand what it’s like to be on the other side.

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