Santa Rosa LGBT advocate hails marriage ruling from Supreme Court steps

Santa Rosa attorney Naomi Metz embraced her wife, Jennifer Foley, on Friday amid the celebration on the steps outside the U.S. Supreme Court. For Metz, the moment reflected the intersection of her private life and her public mission and career, advocating for LGBT clients and equal rights.

An attorney specializing in estate and probate law, she said she wept tears of joy when she read the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. Hours later, she was still nearly at a loss for words to describe the feeling and significance of the legal milestone.

“It’s awesome,” said Metz, 43, a board member of the National LGBTQ Task Force, the country’s oldest gay-rights advocacy group.

Metz noted the majority opinion did two important things. First, it further strengthened a right of privacy that had been handed down in previous major cases, such as those providing for abortion rights and outlawing a Texas sodomy law. “My personal decisions are none of your business…and the fact is I’m entitled to protection of those decisions,” she said of the ruling.

Secondly, it refuted opponents’ claims that same-sex marriage should not be allowed on the crux of protecting children, shooting down every argument put forward by the four other critics on the bench, she said.

The couple were visiting Washington, D.C., last week as part of Metz participation Wednesday in an LGBT pride event at the White House. Metz said she shook hands with President Obama and hugged Vice President Biden, inviting him to Sonoma County to have a glass of wine after he leaves office.

Metz and Foley’s life together reflects many key points on the legal and political timeline of same-sex marriage in the United States in this century. The couple had a commitment ceremony in 2001. They were married in San Francisco in 2004, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom directed city officials to issue marriage licenses to some 4,000 same-sex couples before the state Supreme Court halted the practice and later voided all of the same-sex marriage licenses issued by the city. They were married again in 2008 before the passage of Proposition 8, the state referendum that banned same-sex marriage; that initiative was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, granting the couple “another anniversary,” Metz said.

But Friday’s decision, she said, was so much broader than that 2013 case, U.S. v. Windsor, which at its core focused on narrower questions of a surviving spouse’s eligibility for the federal estate tax exemption. Friday’s ruling dealt more with universal rights, Metz said.

“Today it feels like, ‘Naomi you are entitled to same protection as your sister and brother who are married to those of the opposite sex,’” she said.

Metz said her advocacy work within the LGBT community will now focus on many other pressing issues, such legislation that would prevent an employee from being fired on the basis of sexual orientation - a contentious issue given that the Supreme Court last year carved out a wider religious exemption for some private businesses; housing discrimination, and the rights for transgender people.

“I’m am so thrilled for today ... but just know, we have so much work to do,” she said.