Story and photos by Ted Andersen
What began in 2004 as San Francisco’s activism against a legal ban on same-sex marriage culminated in the nation’s highest court on Friday, June 26 as a resounding victory for LGBT couples across all 50 states.
While not directly related to each other, the two events are part of the same ongoing struggle to legalize same-sex marriage. The early morning news of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in case of Jim Obergefell, who challenged Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage after he was barred from putting his name on his late-husband’s death certificate, unleashed a tidal wave of rainbow reaction on the steps of City Hall.
Revelers, politicians and media gathered in the early morning hours at Civic Center to celebrate. Former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who famously initiated one month of marriage licenses in 2004 that were quickly invalidated by the California Supreme Court, spoke at the impromptu gathering.
“Today is the antidote to cynicism. It’s the antidote to any kind of despair that you may have. Your frustrations, your sense of powerlessness,” he said. “Don’t ever despair, don’t ever give up. Don’t ever believe a challenge is too big.”
Former Castro Supervisor Bevan Dufty said the struggle for marriage equality has been a long one, but that in the grander scheme of things, battle for LGBT safety is far from over.
“Today is about a step forward and it’s about remembering what happened here in 2004 when we started marriage. I officiated 120 marriages that month that Gavin gave us and I think it was a watershed moment,” he said. “And this is a movement where we need to continue fighting against repression in states like Michigan and Texas and then going in countries around the world where basically being an out gay person or lesbian or transgender person is a death sentence.”
Assemblymember David Chiu, former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, agreed that much work is still left unfinished within the city’s local LGBT community.
“Our work is not done. When we have transgender individuals who experience violence, LGBT homeless youth that are living on our streets, businesses that are still discriminating against our LGBT community, we have more to do,” he said. “This is an incredible day for San Francisco and our country and I’m so proud that San Francisco has been the epicenter of the civil rights movement that has defined our generation and so grateful to so many who fought and sacrificed for this day to come.”
Two of those figures were marriage activists John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, who were among those married at City Hall in 2004, and were later plaintiffs in the historic case to overturn Prop 8.
“My husband Stuart and I have been together for 28 years,” Lewis said. “We got married at San Francisco City Hall 11 years ago right here on the steps and that marriage was taken away from us.”
Gaffney praised the Court’s decision, which ended the checkerboard of same-sex legality in which 14 states had previously disallowed it. 
“Marriage equality was a like twinkle in everybody’s eye just a decade ago. We thought at that point maybe in our lifetimes, but it’s real, it’s happening.,” he said. “For many years John and I had to give up our rights as a married couple, our rights as a family, in order to go celebrate the holidays with our family in other states that didn’t recognize our marriage and didn’t recognize our love. Those days are over.”
In one of the day’s greater coincidences, Georgia natives Hai Nguyen and Mark Streeter were married just as people began to gather at City Hall. As Nguyen said, “We didn’t coordinate with the Supreme Court at all.”
“We got engaged two and a half years ago and have just been waiting for the right occasion, and this was not the plan, definitely not the plan,” Streeter said. “It’s just nice that we all have recognition now and can marry who we want, and that’s what it’s all about.”
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