by Dana Monday, June 16th, 2008  8 comments

From Sea to Shining Sea

(Yes, this is a sappy post. We’ve been waiting a long time for this marriage thing, and I didn’t feel like straining to make yet another bad Star Trek pun about George Takei. He’s already said “We are boldly going where no one has gone before,” and I can’t top that.)

A very happy wedding day to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who will marry today at 5:01 p.m. Pacific, after waiting over 50 years. Two other plaintiffs in the marriage case, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, who got the ball rolling for the lawsuit when they were denied a marriage license at the Beverly Hills Courthouse in 2004, will also get their license tonight in the selfsame city. (Martin and Lyon will receive theirs in San Francisco from Mayor Gavin Newsom.)

Marriage is all over the news and likely to remain so all week. I particularly like this article on New York Governor David Patterson, and the straight people who are thanking him on behalf of their daughters and sons for his recognition of out-of-state wedded same-sex couples. I also think it’s cool that the California ruling is boosting sales of a company that makes same-sex cake toppers. (The company was started several years ago by an African American woman who could not find a cake-couple for herself and her fiance, a Japanese American man.)

Lest we forget, too: marriage isn’t the solution for everyone. Read Nancy Polikoff’s well reasoned Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law for a look at why we also need to be thinking about recognizing other forms of committed relationships.

Finally, in case the allusion is lost, the title of this post is not just a comment on geography, but a nod to Katherine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful,” who lived for 25 years with fellow Wellesley College professor Katherine Coman in what is commonly called a “Boston marriage.” (When students and alumnae sing this song at Wellesley, we always change the last line of the first verse to “. . . and crown thy good with sisterhood.”) As we move forward into a future of increasing equality, it’s good not to forget the past.

Congratulations to all the same-sex couples about to marry!

Tags: california, del martin, george takei, marriage, phyllis lyon

Filed under Politics and Law.