Per the CA Supreme Court, my marriage is "void and of no legal effect"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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The California State Supreme Court has released their ruling in the San Francisco gay marriage case, and ruled that Mayor Newsom did not have the authority to issue the licenses, and that the marriages are null and void.

I knew that was going to be their decision, but it still hurts. Under the very narrow grounds they defined it on, correctly, Newsom does not have the authority. Even so, they did have the option of letting the marriages be in limbo until the courts had made a constitutional finding on same-sex marriage. I know, they don’t like leaving big loose ends like that, but still, I had to hope.

What I can’t figure out is why getting married meant so much to me, and why this decision hurts? I don’t love my husband any more or less becuase of the legal status of our relationship. In practical terms, my day to day life isn’t going to change. Even if the Supreme Court had said that my marriage was fully legal, it would have no meaning federally. But still, it hurts that this is the way it has to go for now.

And now, I feel weird using the term husband. I didn’t like to do it before we were married, I told myself my feelings were becuase it was too stuffy and formal. But getting married, I suddenly started using it. Now it feels strange to use “husband” again. I guess it does matter to me whether or not we are married. It also felt great when people saw my ring and asked me if I was married to say YES! Now I have to go back to saying, “Not legally, but in our hearts” which isn’t nearly as much fun to say.

There is hope though, the decision was written very narrowly, and they were very careful to stress that they were not precluding the possibility of same-sex marriages in Ca, after it works its way up through the courts. So heres hoping, and I am going to go home and bring some flowers to my partner. Ugg, I miss calling him my husband already.

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Jeeves I’m sorry this left you feeling so bad. If you want to think of and call him your husband then that’s what he is. Take him the flowers. Take him out to dinner. Have hot sweaty sex for hours on end. You love each other and that’s the big thing right now. I wish I had some magic words to make you feel all better.

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So keep calling him your husband. You got married. Remember that, against better days to come.

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Straight married woman here, but I agree with these guys - he’s still your husband, IMO, if you still want to call him that. When I married my long-term boyfriend, I didn’t think much of anything changed, but I agree that calling him my husband just feels nice sometimes.

They might have denied the legality of your marriage, but they can’t do anything about the love and the hope involved.

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Bummer dude. I wonder if some slick lawyer type can at least make some creative use of “ex post facto” and “detremental reliance” to make the current marriages binding? Lord knows I’d never be able to pull it off (being neither slick nor a lawyer)!

I felt the same way about marriage–felt like the “ritual” would only serve to superimpose a label on an already monogamous relationship. But it does change things despite the reality that the only real change is the creation of a public record for the union. That intangible could be why it has existed as an institution for so long.

Condolences and other sensitive & kind remarks.

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Those fucking bastards. Heartless, loveless sons of bitches. I know this is supposed to be the greatest country in the world, but it definitely isn’t today.
I am so angry about this bullshit!
One step closer to the revolution…
I wonder who the next targets will be? My guess is Mexicans. “Marriage shall be defined in this state as existing solely between a man and a woman, providng they have green cards or are already citizens…”
Then they’ll go after people without jobs:
“Marriage in this state shall exist solely between a man and a woman, providing they hold citizenship or green cards and have jobs…”
Heck why don’t we throw in some sort of phrase about possessing land while we’re at it? And what about skin color? And do people who don’t go to church deserve to marry? Or even vote?

Sometimes I hate this country!!

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Jeeves, dude, haven’t you ever seen “I Love Lucy” or “The Flintstones” or “The Dick Van Dyke Show” or any other sitcoms that have a married couple? They always had one episode where the couple finds out that through some clerical error or something, they were never “really” married. Much hilarity ensues – they sleep in separate beds, they have to start dating each other again – big laughs.

And the joke is that they were really married all along, and no bureaucratic nonsense could change that. People back in the '60’s understood that; how come we’re having so much trouble with it in 2004?

Y’all made the commitment to each other, y’all took the vows, and you even went through all the hoops and complications in order to do it. That’s it, man. You’re married. No getting around it. Nothing that anyone in this thread, or anyone else in the world, is going to change the decision that you and he made together. You love him, you chose to be with him and he did the same; he’s your husband. You’re stuck with it, I’m afraid.

I wish you and your husband all the best and all the happiness you deserve.

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If you take a step back & look at things, they’re both right.

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Yeah, I knew this was coming. Some tiny 1% of me still held out hope that the CA supremes would find some way to say that yes Newsom exceded his authority but that the couples shouldn’t have to suffer for it (there are laws on the books in at least some states, perhaps all, that allow for marriages improperly solemnized to stand if the couples believed them to be valid), but the other 99% of me knew it wouldn’t happen.

I hold out hope. The suits against the ban itself are in progress and the CA legislature seems willing to entertain the notion of full-on marital equality. Cold comfort for Jeeves and his husband, and the other 3,000 or so couples affected by the decision, but the day will come.

Jeeves, regardless of how the legals shake out in the end, congratulations to you and your husband on your marriage.

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John, could I have a word with you in here, please?

And I forgot to say, Jeeves: you gotta keep calling him your husband, or else you’ll have to return all the wedding presents!

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Jeeves, I understand. I never called my girl my wife until after our civil union in 2000. I never thought it would make a difference, either, but after it was done, it was clear it had.

After civil unions started here in Vermont, there was a huge backlash, part of which were signs that were put up all over the state saying “take back Vermont” - because some of the local politicians who were against it (one woman in particular) said that the reason that the state let any of us get civil unions at all was because it was “out-of-staters” that came in and “took over” the governing of the state. But really, that was all that you’d say to a newspaper reporter. Hearing just regular people talk, it was clear that it wasn’t exactly as…political as that.

I consider myself a pretty tough girl, but I cried more than once after seeing one of those signs in an unexpected place. There was an electronics store in downtown Barre that had one in the window. Actually, they showed up more and more in Barre, the blue-collar town that my dad was born and raised in. A farm on a dirt road on the way to a friend’s house had one on their barn.

Somehow, even though I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care what some idiots thought, or that it didn’t matter in the long run… it still hurt me that these strangers, these people that I didn’t even know, were rejecting my right to declare in a small private ceremony that I was commited to my love. That they were pointing out that I was “different”, and that they wanted to make sure that I didn’t have the same rights that they did. I had never felt different from the people around me until I saw how many people put up those signs that summer. That’s something that hasn’t really gone away.

There was a newspaper editorial that was done after the fall or winter of 2000 that found it amusing that several tourists had mistaken the signs for a grass-roots “bring Vermont products home with you” movement. The author thought that it was good that something good had come of the signs instead of hate-mongering. I guess I was too close to the issue to find that amusing. I found it even more hurtful that these poor tourists were looking at these and not seeing the pain that they caused or the intolerance that they stood for.

…you still see them around occasionally.

It’s all a pendulum. When the swing goes farther than the base point one way, it swings back farther the other. This, too, will pass.

I wish you and your husband all the happiness that your lives can hold, and may you have a long and peaceful life together. This from the bottom of my heart.

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{{{Jeeves and MrJeeves}}}

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I want to thank everyone for your kind words. And you are correct, he still is my husband. We had our rings on our left hand before marriage was even a possibility, and we will continue to wear them and declare our love to the entire world. And, no matter what, we have our memories, and no-one can tell me that our marriage is not a real one, even if the legal definition is different at the moment. The Supreme Court ruling directs the city to provide refunds, and that money is going directly to the ACLU to support them in their efforts to win legal marriage for us. And when/if they succeed, and we have to get married again since the first one is void, we’ll take more pictures. As Inigo Montoya and Gravity said, I felt something intangible when we stood in that rotunda and said our vows, and I won’t let those feeling be taken away.

Oh, and damn it, they are going to have to the fifteen fondue pots we recieved out of my clenched fists :wink: *

Type and amount of wedding gifts may have been exagerated for comedic effect. We only got 12 fondue pots. And 3 of those vacuum food saver things.

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I’m sorry Jeeves. If you and your husband consider yourselves married, then I consider you married as well.

I’ve always believed that it was a state of mind, rather than a legal status anyway, although I understand how life can be complicated without that document, not being married to Cowboy myself.

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Think of it as renewing your vows. :slight_smile:

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I love cooking & yummy food. For this reason alone I wish I could have had a gay wedding. But noooooooooo. Mrs. Montoya insisted on a hetero one. We got no presents. But that could be because we had a civil union in the county auditor’s office with no friends/family present.

Still, nobody would have given us any good cookware if we’d invited them. Which is why we didn’t. Well, one of the reasons.

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This is just so sad… I’m really sorry…

My husband and I are supposed to go to a housewarming/wedding celebration in a couple of weeks for two friends who got married at city hall… Now it’s just a housewarming… :frowning:

It’s really strange… I sort of feel awkward about using the term “husband” now for Mr. Survivor… even though my husband and I were married in Toronto and so are still legally married…

I wish the damn U.S. would join the 21st century…

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Not my business, but that’s never stopped me before:

Are your friends the one who’re now calling it just a housewarming? Or is it just because of this ruling? I would think that the same stuff said throughout the rest of this thread still applies to them – they’re married. Why can’t y’all celebrate that?

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Jeeves and others affected by this ruling, my heart goes out to you.

My family is visiting and had already planned to take my wife and I out to celebrate out marriage in Oregon on Thursday. We went, but I didn’t tell my wife about the California ruling until after dinner because it was too upsetting.

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Big bummer, Jeeves and everyone else affected by this. Your day will come again.