SAN FRANCISCO – Rich Walker and Brad Chilcoat were beaming as
they stood in line outside City Hall on Sunday, clutching their
ticket to go inside and get married.
Demand for San Francisco’s controversial same-sex marriage
licenses has been so great that overwhelmed officials here turned
away hundreds of waiting gay and lesbian couples Sunday, telling
them to come back Monday morning.
SAN FRANCISCO – Rich Walker and Brad Chilcoat were beaming as they stood in line outside City Hall on Sunday, clutching their ticket to go inside and get married.
Demand for San Francisco’s controversial same-sex marriage licenses has been so great that overwhelmed officials here turned away hundreds of waiting gay and lesbian couples Sunday, telling them to come back Monday morning.
But Walker and Chilcoat were among the luckier ones. They stood in line for hours Saturday – and left with a number that allowed them to walk into City Hall on Sunday morning to exchange their vows.
They were joining a vast wedding march that began Thursday, when San Francisco officials began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples have been married since, many after waiting hours for a license.
The event has sparked protests and legal challenges from conservatives, but celebrations from gay and lesbian groups who have hailed the event as historic. Officials kept City Hall open during the long holiday weekend, and many clerks and sheriff’s deputies volunteered their time to accommodate couples flocking to San Francisco from throughout the country.
Walker, 50, and Chilcoat, 41, who have owned a home together in San Francisco for the last three and a half years, walked hand in hand through the buzzing corridors of City Hall, smiling and joking with friends who came to witness their official ceremony.
The couple, holding hands for much of the time, were dressed in dark formal suits, each with roses in their lapels signaling the extraordinary day.
Friend Mike Ackerman, 47, of San Francisco, brought them a bouquet of roses.
“It’s just fantastic,” Ackerman kept saying. “They’re just made for each other.”
Walker proposed on bended knee to Chilcoat last summer and they privately exchanged rings on the beach last fall.
Their ceremony Sunday was both more official and more public – presided over by a deputy marriage commissioner and surrounded by the sounds of other couples taking their vows.
“My love for you continues to grow everyday and as I give you this ring, I also give you my heart and my trust,” they said to each other, slipping new platinum rings onto each other. “I promise, before God, to love, honor, cherish and care for you in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.”
But some outside City Hall would have disagreed with those vows. About a dozen people across the street held signs to protest the same-sex marriages. And two organizations are calling the licenses illegal because California law defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Both sides are expected to battle over the issue in court this week.
“If this state and country truly believe in equality, this marriage should be valid,” Chilcoat said.
As the marriage official pronounced Walker and Chilcoat spouses, they clutched their hands tightly, then hugged and kissed. Their friends joined in their embrace at the top of the grand staircase in the center of San Francisco’s ornate City Hall.
“It feels different,” said Walker, who described their commitment to each other as “boundless.”
“If there’s such a thing as more boundless, that’s just what happened,” Walker said.
Like many of the couples married over the long holiday weekend, Walker and Chilcoat pointed to the city’s official recognition of their union as something special.
Their marriage certificate, which they recorded with City Hall clerks after exchanging their vows, “moves us from second-class citizens to equal status,” Chilcoat said.
“It’s official. It’s official,” Walker said, displaying the certificate stamped with both their names.
The two were greeted with cheering crowds of people outside, as they walked down the steps of City Hall with their arms linked.
Later the couple joined friends at a restaurant in the Castro – the San Francisco neighborhood famous as the epicenter of gay and lesbian life – where they ran into another pair of newlyweds who had just exchanged vows.
Less fortunate couples turned away from City Hall on Sunday promised to be back in line Monday – and some said they might not wait that long.
“It’s a major disappointment,” said Jill Kasofsky, 40, who lined up with wife-to-be Cynthia Juno, 45, at 8:15 a.m. Sunday after driving up from Los Angeles. “I’m thinking about coming back at midnight to sleep on the sidewalk. I’m sure I won’t be alone.”
