Even though I suspect you posted this just to give yourself an opportunity to haul out your pulpit I will spare you the rolly-eyed smilie on the small chance that you meant this question seriously. I know the weddings were spur of the moment because the mayor of SF didn’t permit same-sex marriage until Wednesday or Thursday of last week. Regardless of the laudable life intentions of thousands of devoted homosexual couples in the SF region, I seriously doubt that any of them had open-ended honeymoon reservations ready to go “just in case” they woke up one morning to find out that the government was allowing them to marry.
As the poster who started this thread I find the paranoid and baiting tone of many of the respondents distateful. Please take your shoulder chips to other fora; that’s what they are there for. I asked a simple question of fact that, frankly, has yet to be answered definatively. Thanks all.
All pulpits aside, some people have exactly that. While they do not literally have reservations in place, some people have indeed planned to get themselves wed the very day they are allowed to. The plans may be as loose as “go straight to city hall and get wed and then go to the airport and take the first flight to hawaii”, but yeah, a lot of people have plans for their spur-of-the-moment wedding day, they just don’t know when it will be.
You know, this thread is really starting to piss me off.
Iteki, you will notice that the first paragraph of my last post contains three distinct sentences. One of them (the second sentence) refers to spur of the moment weddings. Another (the third) to open-ended honeymoon reservations. I resent the fact that you are trying to blur them together to discredit my assertion.
The fact remains that (presuming the mayor of SF did not leak his intentions) if you asked any of the wedded same-sex couples on Tuesday what they were doing on Friday they would NOT have said, “We’re going down to City Hall to get married then jetting to Hawaii. I bought the plane tickets three weeks ago.”
I know this has been mentioned twice already, but I feel it’s the most obvious point that makes all the other bickering pointless: “traditional” couples can get a marriage license at any city hall. If they arrived at the SF City hall and found they might not be able to get their license/be married, then they had the option of going down the steps of city hall, across the plaza and down the stairs to BART and be at the Oakland City Hall in around 10 minutes. No one has to postpone anything or miss their plane. (If they brought their suitcases, they can get right back on BART and go directly to either SFO or Oakland Airport as well.) It’s seriously not even an issue.
The law that the mayor, or whoever issued the marriage certificates broke, is the law that came into being as a result of proposition 22…“only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California”. Whether that’s constitutional under either the California or US Constitutions is another question.
And those marriages which took place before Loving were illegal, and the licenses invalid, weren’t they? So, why weren’t they a breach of public order?
So there is a divergence of opinion as to whether the mayor’s actions violate the law.
In other news, admitted sexual batterer and CA governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has told SF’s mayor to [url=http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/02/021804arnoldMarry.htmknock it off. If anyone has moral authority on matters relating to sexuality and the law, it’s Arnold.
When I got married in CA, it was ridiculously easy. All you have to do is look in the phone book. There are tons of ministers who can issue you a marriage license and perform the wedding the same day. No lines, no waiting. Some of them will pretty much come to your house if you want. I’m not sure why someone would go to Las Vegas, it’s so easy here.
I can’t see any straight couples who wanted to get the license and married the same day would have to go anywhere near city hall. I elected to hand carry the license to city hall myself, but the minister could have just mailed it in for me.
Laura says that a lot of people think that gay marriage is shocking, but isn’t willing to comment on her personal views (saying “Let’s just leave it at that” when asked). That could mean that she thinks gay marriage is shocking, or that she’s ok with gay marriage but doesn’t want to say so publicly for political reasons.