Lifelong Partners, Activists Wed at Last

At a point in life when most people are focused on retirement, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, 83 and 79, wrote their names onto a page in history Thursday by the simple act of getting married.

Fifty-one years after they first moved into an apartment together, the two longtime political activists sealed their vows at San Francisco City Hall in the first government-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the country.

“We were happy to be able to do it, to show that it was do-able,” said Lyon, speaking from the couple’s home in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood later in the afternoon. “But it’s not going to make a lot of difference in our life.”

In their half-century of activism, Martin and Lyon have helped organize about 30 groups focused on issues such as feminism, healthcare and civil rights. They have held court with the likes of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

But they are best known as early crusaders in the gay rights movement.

At a time when gays and lesbians were meeting only in bars, the Bay Area natives helped start the first lesbian rights organization in 1955, a group they called the Daughters of Bilitis after an obscure book of lesbian love poems. They opened a public office, published a national newsletter and began to advocate changes in California’s sex laws. Their work helped remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Assn.’s manual of mental illness in 1973.

“They’re iconic figures,” said Thom Lynch, executive director of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center. “They fought these fights before there was the support to do it.”

Harry S. Truman was president when the two began working together at an engineering and architectural magazine in Seattle. One evening in 1950, they went out with co-workers for drinks. Talk turned to homosexuality and someone asked why Martin knew so much about it.

“Del said, ‘Cuz I am one,’ ” Lyon recalled. “That was one of the more exciting things that has happened to me. She was a lesbian, and I couldn’t imagine what that all meant.

“Nobody talked about sex then,” she said. “They didn’t talk about sex between a man and a woman or anything else. It’s a miracle to me that some of us found out who we were.”

Neither of them made a move for two years, until Lyon was about to move to San Francisco. “She made a half-pass at me. I made a pass at her,” Lyon explained simply. They kept in touch and the affection grew.

“She wanted to get together, but I was not sure I was ready to settle down,” Lyon said. “I decided, just as she was giving up, that it was OK. She moved here on Valentine’s Day, 1953.”

The two finish each other’s sentences and each seems to know instinctively when the other is tired, friends said. These days, as they struggle with health issues brought on by age, they spend more time in their small house.

Kate Kendall, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said she regularly goes to their house for lunch.

“They are so down-to-earth, accessible and approachable as to make it appear as if they are oblivious to how revered and important they are,” said Kendell, who witnessed their ceremony Thursday morning.

Lyon and Martin follow city and national politics closely, especially with an eye to issues of importance to senior citizens, Kendell said.

“As much as they deserve a peaceful retirement, they are still activists, and I don’t believe they will ever retire in the way we normal humans understand that word to mean,” she said.