San Francisco Allows Gay Marriages

Rona Marech, Chronicle Staff Writer, Reports:

The story of Mayor Gavin Newsom's bold dictum to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the thousands who have descended on San Francisco City Hall has captivated people around the country -- and advocates on both sides of the issue say the media attention has galvanized their forces.

In Dallas, news stories about same-sex marriages in San Francisco are being broadcast on television at least once every news cycle. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found time and space for the marriage hoopla in San Francisco -- running numerous stories and photographs of couples lining up for marriage licenses and exuberantly leaving City Hall as newlyweds. Editorial writers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal (both supporting same-sex marriage) have penned various opinions on the subject.

San Francisco is in the news, big time.

"I can certainly say that all around the country, people are watching," said Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry. "We have the deeply moving images of thousands of couples lining up overnight, some in the rain -- some with kids and parents -- because of their deep hunger to marry. There's no question it's touching a chord."

But Robert Knight, director of the conservative Culture and Family Institute in Washington, D.C., said, "Some people have seen it over and over and are becoming jaded, which is a goal of the activists. So people don't think it's any big deal. But others are outraged and see it as anarchy and the breakdown of civilization itself."

"People who know marriage is between man and woman will be turned off by the image. They will take a stronger stand to defend marriage," said Diane Gramley, president of American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

Marriage equality advocates from Georgia to North Carolina to New York --

who have been following the blow-by-blow action in San Francisco in the local and national media -- had a different take.

"People are realizing the earth didn't fall off its axis. Heterosexual marriages are not suddenly crumbling because of gay people getting married," said Cindy Abel, who runs an Atlanta public relations firm focusing on gay and lesbian issues.

All too often, the news cameras only come out at gay pride celebrations when people are whooping it up in costume. The attention to committed couples in San Francisco is helping to show the diversity in the gay community, she said.

While the events in the Massachusetts Legislature have shined welcome light on the issue of same-sex marriage, the saga in San Francisco has succeeded in adding a deeply human element to the debate, said Cathy Renna, news media director at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation, a media advocacy group.

Renna -- who had been instrumental in getting footage of San Francisco's first same-sex marriage between Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon on "Good Morning America" -- cried when she watched the program. "How amazing to know that so many Americans are seeing loving couples who have been together for 51 years, realize the dream of having the rights and protections that they deserve as a couple," she said.

Renna compared it to the evolution of her mother's attitude toward the commitment ceremony that she and her partner recently held. At first, her mother was lukewarm, but eventually, she was won over completely.

"I think some version of that happens when people who haven't thought about this issue in anything but an abstract sense see real couples telling their stories, and they see the images of them going to City Hall, exchanging marriage vows and getting that piece of paper."

The issue has naturally popped up in numerous opinion pages around the country.

"'What more proof do decent, law-abiding and moral citizens need that the homosexual-lesbian agenda is out of control" reader Tom Russell wrote to The Press-Enterprise in Riverside.

But while letters and opinion pieces have reflected a real divide around the country, many editorials have come out in favor of the nuptial activities at City Hall.

"... As symbolism it has struck a deep chord, dramatically illustrating the hunger of gay couples for official recognition, something that any compassionate society would attempt to accommodate," read the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette.

"The future has been on display in San Francisco over the past few days. That future is tolerant, respectful and supportive of the rights of all Americans to marry. And it's on the way, faster than even the most optimistic among us could have imagined," wrote The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal.

Even those who came out against Newsom's tactics mostly did so on technical and legal rather than philosophical grounds.

"It's easy to sympathize with the elected officials in San Francisco who have begun issuing marriage licenses to gay couples -- they believe in this issue passionately, and they're doing something they believe in," opined the Los Angeles Daily News. "But they're also breaking the law. And elected officials are sworn to uphold the law, even laws they disdain."

The Dallas Morning News agreed. "Whether it comes from the political left or right, this kind of thing must be discouraged," the Wednesday editorial read. "If state and local officials across the country began to assert the right, however speciously, to defy the law, we would have chaos."

E-mail Rona Marech at