Cheers filled San Francisco's City Hall shortly after 5 p.m. as longtime lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, partners for more than 50 years, began their second wedding - and their first legal union.Lyon's and Martin's ceremony was the only one at San Francisco's City Hall last night. Today, same-sex marriages will begin in earnest all over California. Thousands of couples are expected to marry, to exercise their equality.
Mayor Gavin Newsom, who officiated the ceremony in the reception area of his office, said it was a fitting way to memorialize last month's state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in California, which took effect at 5:01 p.m.
Lyon, 83, and Martin, 87, were the first couple married four years ago when Newsom told the county clerk's office to start offering marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Eventually more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married in San Francisco that year, but those unions were later nullified by the court. Today, the couple, and dozens of others, had their first chance to make their unions truly legal.
This is a happy day.
And if any Shakers get hitched, I want pictures!
Digman Phoenix Barnes and William Marion Jennings
cheer as weddings begin in Oakland, California.
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