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Day Two: Same-sex couples ready to join the 21 other couples who exchanged vows Monday.
Published: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 3:43 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 12:21 p.m.
It was a regular business day Tuesday at the quiet Sonoma County clerk’s office. But with a twist.
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FIFTH TIME'S A CHARM
Robin Mathias, left, and Bo Laurent are married by Raymond Leonard. This was the couple's fifth ceremony in the past nine years.
Photos by CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / The Press DemocratA man filled out a form for a copy of his birth certificate. A woman and man waited at a counter for a marriage license.
And two bridesmaids in shiny red dresses twirled each other around as they waited for their lesbian friends to be wed, on the first full day that same-sex couples can be legally married in the state.
One woman wore a white wedding dress. Her partner leaned against the counter in black slacks and a collared shirt.
They could have been any other couple to carpenter Toby Buerger, 34, of Petaluma.
He waited in line with his fiance, Leslie Cary, 32. They plan to wed July 12.
“I didn’t even notice,” he said. “It has no effect on me whatsoever. It’s great. Whatever makes you happy.”
That was the resounding mood Tuesday morning as a handful of same-sex couples and a few straight couples filed into the clerk’s office to be wed or get marriage licenses.
Monday evening, 21 same-sex couples were pronounced legally married before crowds of excited family members and friends. It marked California as the second state in the nation to legalize gay and lesbian nuptials, after Massachusetts.
County Clerk Janice Atkinson performed the first ceremony here, marrying Guerneville residents Mark Gren, 37, and Chris Lechman, 42.
They brought her a colorful bouquet of roses that was displayed in the office Tuesday.
“It’s incredible. It’s the most amazing feeling,” she said.
She had stayed at the office until 9 p.m. and was tired, but ready for the 28 same-sex couples scheduled to wed Tuesday.
She had deputized seven county officials in addition to the four employees already able to perform marriages, and prepared for Monday as it were “another Valentine’s Day.”
Chief deputy county council Sheryl Bratton was also married to her partner Monday.
Absent were the smattering of protests that greeted couples at the four other counties open late as ceremonies began on Monday.
“Maybe we’re off the beaten path,” Petersen said. “This was just a happy place.”
Alameda and Yolo counties also stayed open until 8 p.m. Monday. Los Angeles and San Francisco each married one couple at 5:01 p.m., when the state Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage took effect.
In Sonoma County, 97 couples at last count had booked to marry through August.
The county clerk’s office will remain open until 8 p.m. through June to accommodate the influx of weddings.
Christina Saint-Laurent, 39 was expecting hordes of gay and lesbian couples Tuesday.
“I walked in and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s straight people getting married today?”
She drove up early from her home in San Francisco to watch her friends be wed and was shocked to be “the only gay person in the room.”
But the first rush of same-sex couples soon came, shortly before 10 a.m., as five same-sex couples waited in line to be wed.
Before that, several same-sex couples had walked in and were married at or outside the office in a quiet garden.
And deputy county clerk Vicki Petersen was expecting much more walk-ins.
“It’s $75 for a license and $50 for a ceremony,” she told the first of several callers inquiring about marriage within their first hour of opening.
A man in bicycle shorts approached her counter and asked about his passport. That’s more the norm.
The office typically marries six couples a day and conducts an average of 150 transactions including business name statements and applications for death and birth certificates.
That’s the reason why construction worker Dennis Haley, 34, strolled into the clerk’s office just before 8:30 a.m.
As a lesbian couple waited to be wed, Haley stood at a tall counter next to a wall of forms.
“I lost my birth certificate and I need a new one,” he said, adjusting his baseball hat. “It’s just a normal day.”
He lived in Santa Rosa for 33 years before moving near Chico. He’s Republican, conservative, and a Christian, he said.
But he didn’t have a problem with the same-sex marriages being performed.
“I see both ends. The worst part was how it was a judicial decision instead of the people deciding. But me, I don’t care if people want to be together. That’s fine,” Haley said.
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