Author, playwright, activist, and San Francisco Bay Times columnist Jewelle Gomez and her partner Diane Sabin were active in the fight for marriage equality both during and after the Winter of Love. Like many Bay Area residents, they celebrated then San Francisco Mayor Newsom’s bold decision in 2004 to order city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
They were among the litigants against the state of California suing for the right to legal marriage in 2008. The case was brought to the courts by the City Attorney of San Francisco, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
In May of that year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the litigants, allowing marriage between same-sex couples in California. Gomez and Sabin were among 18,000 couples who married in California before Proposition 8 (which banned further same-sex marriages in California) was approved by voters on November 4, 2008. Gomez and Sabin married in October 2008. Their wedding was announced in The New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/2tn835rb
It was not until June 26, 2015, that the Fourteenth Amendment required all states to grant same-sex marriages. Throughout it all, and to this day, Gomez and Sabin have weathered the storms together.
Looking back on the years of the legal battles, Gomez said, “The marriage equality campaign had other major outcomes, in addition to allowing queer people to get married. It forced an open discussion of equal rights resulting in more people saying ‘gay’ out loud than ever before. And it revealed a lot of people’s really ugly prejudices.”
“Some queer and non-queer people mistakenly thought our equality was won when we could marry legally,” she added. “I believe more of us understood this was just the beginning of a struggle for human rights that was far reaching and one in which queer people, people of color, and lesbian feminists could have a powerful effect.”
20 Years Later the Winter of Love
Published on February 8, 2024
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