The donations from friends and family in honor of our wedding helped the effort to defeat California’s constitutional amendment that intends to stop same-sex marriages. The Unitarian Universalist church, with help from you, strengthened the No on 8 movement. The church contributed space and services to the statewide campaign, and made a great deal of noise on its own.
On the night before the election, five local television stations broadcast video footage from the church’s Marriage Equality Vigil. For at least one news cycle the images of No on 8 came from a religious institution while the supporters of discrimination were shown yelling on street corners. We liked that a lot.
We were interviewed briefly on three stations – we never expected that our five seconds of fame would come under the TV label of “Newlyweds”. See us on KPIX (CBS) and on the local NBC affiliate .
Horribly, Prop 8 passed.
In the past two weeks, our church has joined in both public protest and litigation. Demonstrators marched behind the church banner in San Francisco’s November 15th protest – the one that coincided with demonstrations around the country and world. Rev. Gregory Stewart, the church’s Senior Minister who married us, was arrested for non-violent civil disobedience after the City Hall rally.
The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California has filed a petition with the California Supreme Court asking that Proposition 8 be invalidated. The national Unitarian Universalist Association has issued public statements and has published a video declaring its support for the right of all loving couples to marry. A picture from our wedding is in the video (at the 39 seconds mark). Another five seconds of fame as “newlyweds”!
We don’t know what the courts will decide in 2008 or 2009, or what the voters will decide in 2010 or whenever.
We do know that we had a spectacular legal marriage on October 25, 2008!
We are grateful to Mark Rogers Photography for publishing memories of our day online. Mark captured the key moments without being intrusive. He also took photographs of most all of our guests with a mix of portrait and action shots. Remember the squaredancing?!
Mark’s portfolio is at www.tinyurl.com/Ozdachs08 .
Kathleen Quenneville, Sonnie Willis, and Chad Rahmanhi added to our memories with photographs of their own. Their pictures include more parts of the day and show people who had escaped Mark’s lens. We’ve posted their views in a slide show (or see a static album of the same photographs).
Thank you!
Although our joy was tempered by the passage of Prop 8, the wedding remains a powerful memory for us. We are still high from that day.
Lovely!