Same-Sex Rush to the altar before Election Day

By Mike Swift


Mercury News

Article Launched: 10/31/2008 06:14:06 PM PDT


Like any wedding, there were proud moms aiming cameras, Kleenex wordlessly passed and two people standing before family and friends, their eyes so deeply locked that it felt they might never look away.

For Paula Jabloner and Lisa Miller, Joseph Toves and Jorge Hernandez, Weston McMillan and Danny Strilchuk, Linda Hulberg and Michelle Dana, among a surge of same-sex couples who got married in San Jose this week, there was also a deep feeling of happiness as a deputy wedding commissioner intoned the identical 13 words:

"I now pronounce you married under the laws of the state of California."

Four days from now, after California votes on whether to ban same-sex marriage, they may not be able to hear those words. For the same-sex couples who married this week just before Election Day, there was certainly happiness. But if their happiness was just as deep, it was more subdued than on June 17, when a triumphant line of gay and lesbian couples formed soon after dawn outside the county offices in San Jose, waiting to become the first same-sex couples married in Santa Clara County.

Many couples who took their vows in the little wedding chapel at the Santa Clara County building this week say they accelerated their plans, to say "I thee wed" before the state votes on Proposition 8 Tuesday.

"It kind of feels like a shotgun wedding," Miller, an archivist at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, said Friday with a rueful smile as she stood with
Jabloner, who is also an archivist, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. "Neither one of us is pregnant, but . . ."

Around the Bay Area, even in areas like Silicon Valley and the East Bay where gay people are not as numerous or visible as in San Francisco, county officials say 20 to 30 percent more people have gotten married this October than the same month last year. Business is growing more brisk as Election Day approaches.

Most counties do not track the gender of wedding partners, but clerk-recorders are confident that same-sex couples worried about Prop. 8 are one reason for the increase.

"From what I'm hearing by phone calls and the public that's coming in, that's why they are coming in," said Kevin Hing, chief of the clerk-recorder's office in Alameda County, where the number of weddings this past week was more than a third-higher than last week.

In Santa Clara County, the number of weddings performed in the county offices this month will be at least 25 percent higher than last October. Gina Alcomendras, the county-clerk recorder, is setting aside an auditorium Monday at 4 p.m. for a mass ceremony, to accommodate any last-minute rush. A mass ceremony Friday afternoon drew nine couples.

Even clerk-recorders are uncertain about what will happen if Prop. 8 passes. While the constitutional ban would take effect immediately, the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials don't know what to do about same-sex couples who receive a 90-day marriage license before Nov. 4, but plan to marry later.

"If somebody buys their license on the First, and the measure passes and takes effect, and you go to get married on the 10th, does it count or not?" said Stephen Weir, clerk-recorder in Contra Costa County and past president of the state association. "We don't know."

If Prop. 8 passes, the fate of same-sex couples who have already married is certain to wind up back in the courts, as well as an anticipated challenge to whether it is constitutional for California to revive its ban on same-sex marriage.

All that uncertainty has been weighing on many couples with marriage plans.

Clark Williams of San Jose, had planned to marry his partner Jim Moore in April, and they had even put a deposit down on a big hall. Instead, they decided to save some money and make a statement.

By moving up their wedding and sending out announcements of their Oct. 17 wedding to as many people as they could, they hoped to influence some to vote No on Prop. 8.

"Jim and I are fairly well integrated into the community," Williams said. "But we do know people who, we're the only gay people that they know."

Miller and Jabloner of San Jose, who have been together for 12 years, were also planning to wait until next year to get married. So were Hulberg and Dana, who live in Morgan Hill and have been together for six and a half years. News reports convinced them they couldn't wait.

"We were looking at the polls, and decided we should get married," said Hulberg, "just in case."

On Thursday, Hulberg, a mortgage broker, and Dana, who works for Cisco Systems, got their two-year-old daughter up, and their twin nine-year-old sons off the school. Hulbert installed two "No on 8" campaign signs on their front lawn. Dressed in Navy blue pant suits, the couple headed off to San Jose.

Dana said one reason to get married was to send a message to their kids. Marriage, she thought, would help convey "the normalcy" of their family to the children.

As two close friends took photos, the two women stood facing each other in front of a white trellis in the 15-person chapel off the cafeteria in the county office building. Hulberg lightly rested her left hand on Dana's shoulder as deputy marriage commissioner Joseph Stasi, a volunteer, began the ceremony.

Afterwards, the happy couple drove home to Morgan Hill. As they pulled into the driveway, they received an unpleasant wedding gift.

The "No on 8" campaign signs Hulberg had posted on her property that morning were gone.

Mercury News Staff Writer Howard Mintz contributed to this story. Contact Mike Swift at (408) 271-3648 or at mswift@mercurynews.com.