Family Values: Support All Loving Relationships (mutual lust is ok, too!)

In this world why would anyone be against the legitimation of loving relationships?

Thivai

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Dear Thivai,

Thursday, February 12, 2004 was the happiest and most moving day of our lives together -- the day we married each other in San Francisco City Hall after seventeen years together.

Tomorrow morning, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments from anti-gay rights organizations and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer that our marriages are nothing in the eyes of the law. They will argue that regardless of how unconstitutional the marriage laws of California may be, local officials like Mayor Gavin Newsom must perpetuate injustice rather than cure it. Even though the validity of our marriage, and the marriages of more than 4000 other couples, are the subject of this hearing, neither we nor any of the other married couples were allowed to be parties to these lawsuits.

We did not marry merely for symbolic value, or just to make a political statement. We married to obtain the very tangible benefits of marriage that have been denied to us our entire relationship and to claim what is rightfully ours - our dignity to be treated as fully equal American citizens . We are a nation of laws, and Mayor Newsom interpreted the state statutes in accordance with the Constitution.

This attempt to revoke our marriage is particularly painful for our family because Stuart's parents were an interracial couple who married here in California fifty-two years ago, in 1952. At the time Stuart's parents were married, the California statute books said that interracial couples could not marry, just as today California's statute books say that same-sex couples cannot marry. But in 1948, the California Supreme Court had become the first appellate court in United States history to rule that the laws banning interracial marriage are unconstitutional. Without that ruling by the California Supreme Court, Stuart's parents would have been prohibited from marrying, and we would not be here today.

Tomorrow, we will watch with the hope that the California Supreme Court remains true to its historic role in ensuring equal protection of the laws governing marriage.

Stuart Gafffney and John Lewis

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