>Just after noon today, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week ruled California’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional, denied the stay sought by backers of the ban. Next week, gay couples in California will once again be able to wed, unless the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals grants the opponents a stay.

Walker is a conservative Republican, first nominated by Ronald Reagan but denounced by progressives at the time as being anti-gay. The legal team on our side included Ted Olson, a conservative lawyer who defended George W. Bush in his election controversy.

I have been teary all afternoon.

When I came out thirty-five years ago, I could not have even imagined that the idea of queers getting legally married would EVER be discussed seriously in my lifetime.  Based on the messages I received from the world around me – predominantly books, my family, and the Catholic church – I anticipated that mine would be a life of loneliness, discrimination, and possibly violence.

Today, I am legally married and my son has two legal moms. The kids in my cohousing neighborhood think this is completely normal. The movement for marriage equality has ridden on the shoulders of the greater civil rights movement – until 1967, there were states where inter-racial marriages where illegal.

Some days, all I can do is rage about how far we have to go. Other days, I glory in how far we have come.

Eris & Leslie’s legal wedding, June 2008, Rev. Richard Senghas presiding