Ahem. Gay wedding blitz proving, um, a bit awkward
Big events are hard to avoid in this intimate city. Still, when Katherine Pramprasert took her 8-year-old to City Hall last week, she thought the coast would be clear.
The gay wedding boom was entering Week Two -- two court challenges had been beaten back, the novelty had ebbed and the long lines and TV crews had temporarily dissipated. Pramprasert, a city employee who had taken the day off for her daughter’s birthday, bet she could indulge the child’s request to see her workplace without an early tutorial on same-sex marriage.
And, in fact, they were mere steps from the exit when little Madasen looked up from her new stuffed bunny and blurted: “Mom! Those two girls are kissing!”
Pramprasert feigned deafness.
“Mom!” Now the child was yelling. “Those girls....”
“They were getting married. Shhh.”
“Married! Two girls can get married? But....”
“It’s like Alex in your class, you know, who has two mommies?”
“Yeah, but how come they were kissing, Mom? Mom?”
San Francisco’s historic decision to sanction same-sex civil marriage has been rippling through the city in ways that have been not only sweeping but also unanticipated and at times awkward -- even here. Though same-sex couples have long been integral to the Bay Area’s cultural fabric, and though the legality of the marriages has been legally challenged, residents gay and straight say the official-ness of the recent ceremonies and the repeated refusal of judges to halt them has made the marriages feel far more real than anyone expected. The result has thrust this famously cosmopolitan city into a state of social confusion regarding the new do’s and don’ts of its civic experiment.
There is the new peer pressure. Same-sex couples who haven’t committed say they are suddenly being forced into “the talk” about where their relationships are heading. Unattached gays and lesbians say the national media attention has made them lie low, lest the cameras show a love that’s less than Ozzie-and-Harriet perfect. So many weddings have happened so fast that even close friends aren’t sure who in their social circle is and is not married.
There is the new etiquette. Conversations all over the city have overnight become studded with shy, blushing references to “my partn-- oops! I mean my wife” or “my, uh, husband.” Some couples have announced their devotion so many times -- coming out to their families, taking out domestic partnership papers, exchanging rings at commitment ceremonies -- that one of the running jokes at City Hall is the happy couple with no idea when their anniversary is.
There is the new queer-eye-for-straight-families. Heterosexual parents who thought their young children were worldly enough, just by growing up here, are being peppered with questions many hadn’t expected until their kids’ adolescence, and that, in some cases, require refresher lessons in tolerance. “My [preschool] boy saw two guys getting married on the news, and I didn’t know what to say -- he ran into the kitchen yelling, ‘Yuck!’ ” confessed one woman at a gathering of parochial school mothers.
Noted Pramprasert, who applauded the weddings and said she loved raising a daughter in such a diverse city: “She has friends in same-sex households, but when kids hear ‘two mommies,’ they just think, ‘Yay, an extra mommy’ -- they don’t think about what it means.”
Measuring the impact
The legal and political impact of the city’s issuance of same-sex marriage has been well-documented since Feb. 12, when the city’s first license was issued. At least two challenges are pending in court and the state attorney general was asked Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to step in to stop them. Meanwhile, the marriages -- more than 3,100 as of last week -- have engendered a flurry of reactions from elected officials, ranging from the dismay of Schwarzenegger to the approval of Carole Migden, who heads the state’s Board of Equalization and last week married her partner of 19 years.
At the personal level, however, the impact has been less predictable and less well-charted. Protests have been muted in part because even the nominal conservatives tend to be left-leaning in this liberal town. Also, the city’s decision was so sudden that most of the civil ceremonies have been spur of the moment, so -- aside from an open-house reception Sunday for the first couple to be married, Del Marton and Phyllis Lyon -- most celebrations have been low-key.
Which isn’t to say the situation has been bad for business.
Max’s Opera Cafe, two blocks from City Hall, reported a 25% rise in receipts due to just-married couples going forth in search of the nearest nice restaurant. Does Your Father Know, a notions store in the predominantly gay Castro district, sold out of plastic groom-and-groom wedding cake toppers. The Metropolitan Community Church has spent the past two Sundays quietly blessing dozens of same-sex civil ceremonies.
Florists citywide have been swamped due in part to a Web-based grass-roots movement -- launched last week in Minneapolis under the name Flowers in the Heartland -- that has prompted hundreds of strangers to send flowers at random to same-sex couples waiting in line at City Hall to be married. Friendly Spirits, a wine store, became the talk of the town after its owner offered any newlywed who could produce a marriage license a 15% discount on champagne.
Social adjustments
But mostly, the civil marriages have meant a variety of social adjustments, even in a city where polls last week showed support for gay marriage at 58%.
One gay real estate agent said he’s had to bite his tongue all week because, unlike most of his friends, he “can’t get worked up about” same-sex marriage. “I can’t be quoted by name because everyone I know will be mad at me, but there’s no true legal significance to these ceremonies,” he said, cringing at what he viewed as his political incorrectness. “Until there is, I don’t see the point of them.”
Other gay and lesbian San Franciscans say they have been taken aback at the kindness of heterosexuals, even beyond the Bay Area. U.B. Morgan, a 40-year-old sculptor who married his partner last week before the couple left to visit relatives with their 9-month-old baby, said that strangers at San Francisco International Airport guessed they were married and rushed to congratulate them. When they landed in Baltimore, he said, the United Airlines flight attendants went into the first-class cabin and returned with a bottle of wine as a wedding present.
“This stewardess went, ‘How can you deny happiness?’ ” said Morgan, his voice thickening with emotion.
Not all the reaction, of course, has involved the social niceties. Some gay-rights groups say they are braced for the possibility of increased hate crime and political backlash. And as the festival-like atmosphere around City Hall has been supplanted by a return to normal, bureaucratic working hours, many gays and lesbians say they’ve been sobered, both by their respect for the institution of marriage and a desire to show their sincerity to the rest of the nation.
“Over the Valentine’s weekend, when it first started, everyone was ebullient,” said Derik Cowan, a 27-year-old sales clerk at a notions shop in the Castro. “But now you’re starting to hear, ‘Wait a minute.’ We’re under a microscope. We have to play this just right. We can’t afford to be even a little bit imperfect -- we can’t afford even one couple who might pull a Britney Spears, going to City Hall and then, going, ‘Oops! We didn’t mean it!’ ”
That consideration, he said, plus the desire to wait until gay marriage was sorted out and legally tested, helped him and his partner decide against joining the rush to City Hall last week. Wouldn’t it be awful, he said, “to end up being the first gay divorce?”