on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Married, Not Married, Married …

Same-sex couples talk about life during the rise and fall of Prop. 8, California’s gay marriage ban

(Aug. 12, 2010)  In 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed same-sex couples to marry in his city. Between Feb. 12 and March 11 — the day the state Supreme Court stopped the practice — 4,037 same-sex couples got their marriage licenses in SF. Almost a dozen of those couples were from Humboldt County, and in June of that year, the North Coast Journal interviewed several of them (“For Love & Equality,” June 3, 2004).

Much has happened since then. By August 2004, the marriage licenses that had been issued to same-sex couples in San Francisco were nullified. Then, in May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that the right of same-sex couples to marry was protected by the California Constitution. That right was taken away in November of that year, after voters passed Proposition 8, a citizen’s initiative that amended the Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman. The roughly 18,000 legal same-sex marriages that had already taken place that year were allowed to stand. Now Prop. 8 has been overturned: Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker said Prop. 8 violated gays’ and lesbians’ rights to due process and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

Cameryn, left, and Jamara Indigo. PHOTO BY HEIDI WALTERS

GALLERY >

“The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples,” Walker wrote.

That evening came the rejoicing. Outside the Humboldt County Courthouse, a crowd gathered to celebrate the judge’s ruling; the whooping and yelling and honking could be heard halfway across town. Certainly, elsewhere, there must have been plenty of shocked grumbling among the 39.9 percent of Humboldtians who voted for Prop. 8, and among 7 million other Californians — the 51 percent who voted for it. And, indeed, on Thursday the pro-Prop. 8 camp had filed its appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case likely is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And that could mean the question of whether gays and lesbians have the constitutional right to wed may be settled for once and all, perhaps not just in California but in the country overall, the majority of whose states ban gay marriage.

We decided to check in with some of the people we’d interviewed in 2004 after their San Francisco-sanctioned weddings. How have they been weathering the past six years on this wild marry-go-round?

Camryn and Jamara Indigo were at Clam Beach last Wednesday on a dog adventure when Judge Walker’s decision was announced, so they didn’t hear about it until later. They own and operate The Indigo Dog House — a homey sort of bed-and-breakfast for pooches while their owners are out of town. The Indigos also offer day outings — “dog adventures” — for dogs whose owners are at work. After the adventure last Wednesday, one of the dog owners who came by to pick up their dog said to them, “Congratulations, I heard the case was resolved.”

“We were like, hey, OK, we hadn’t checked,” said Camryn, sitting with Jamara on their back porch last Friday, in Eureka. Their dog, Scout, tussled with a blue ball on the lawn, while the boarder dogs lounged comfortably about — except for the sleek mini dachsund, who chirped and trilled poutily. “We knew the decision was due.”

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