Prop 8 couples talk to Ray Suarez

Ray Suarez: Was there a moment when you realized that you were not just disappointed people, as a lot of people were in California after Proposition 8, but ready to join the fight and actually take this to court?

Paul Katami: Well, Proposition 8 hurt. It hurt before it passed because the propaganda took a shift, and the shift was to utilize this idea that children would be harmed, that the institution of marriage would be harmed, that heterosexual couples would no longer get married if you were to allow marriage equality. It was the propaganda that was filled with lies and misrepresentations of our community, of who we are, [of] what our love represents, that really lit the fire for us before Prop 8 passed. Because we thought this cannot happen in California. But we saw that the tactics of it. We saw the attack ads against us and our community. And then Prop 8 passed. It was really devastating. We just stood up. We literally just at one point stood up and said, "This is enough." Like, we can't go door to door and lobby our neighbors for our rights any longer. We can't knock on the door and say, "Please read the Constitution because it applies to me as well." 

Once a person comes out to themselves, to their friends, hasn't that always in our history been accompanied by the realization that "I will never be married"? 

Jeff Zarrillo: Absolutely. We really thought, "OK, yeah, it would be nice to be married. But that's not for us. We're not allowed to do that." I think when Prop 8 came to be, it woke us up and we said, "Wow. You know, this really hurts when people talk about us this way." Or, "Really, who are they to say these things about our relationship?" We have six nieces and nephews. We're the cool uncles. We're not going to hurt any children. When you are gay and lesbian, you have these moments in your everyday life where you have to come out every day, whether it's at the grocery store or the bank or a hotel desk. These are moments that you learn to cope and you learn to just say, "Oh, God, do I want to make this person uncomfortable by telling them, 'No, I want a king-sized bed for me and my husband,' or 'me and my partner, who is not my business partner, but my life partner'?" There's an ongoing circle of coping and coming out.

But ongoing also is the journey of millions of people, some you know, some you don't, who were perfectly happy with you making a domestic arrangement, working it out, filling in some of the legal blanks through other means, not marriage. And that was fine. They didn't hate you.  But they were happy with the way things were, that you couldn't get married because marriage was an institution that was reserved for certain people and not you.

Katami: Well, you know, it's interesting that there was this idea of redefining what marriage means. Through our entire case, we never redefined marriage. For us, it was a universal story of love, right? You fall in love, you want to get married. All we wanted was the right to marry because of the rights that come with it. And many times, we encountered the opposition that said, "No, you don't deserve those rights," because of some moral or maybe a religious obstacle to that, a barrier that we had to break through. We always said that the ceremonious rites that come along with that, that we would spell R-I-T-E-S, the rites of marriage that some people want to protect as their definition of marriage, is fine by us. We're not trying to impose our beliefs or our lives or anything on those rites in marriage. But there are R-I-G-H-T-S rights that come along with marriage as well. And that's critical to us. That's what benefits our lives. I think when you relay those stories, when you talk about the human stories of people struggling against this barrier to equality, that it really does allow people to say, OK, well, we live in a country where we could be neighbors. The fence between our homes is the Constitution. We don't ever have to agree if your rites of marriage are something that are sanctimonious to you and that you want to really hold onto and believe that it is your definition. That's fine. That's absolutely acceptable to us. But, on the other side of it, this fence is the Constitution that says that we all should be treated equally, that the 14th Amendment protects all Americans. 

Zarrillo: To distill your question down to this basic argument of separate but equal, and that's really what the question is about. You can have these rights, but you just can't have this part of it. You can't have that word. Well, back in the '60s, you can have that water, but you just can't drink it from the same water fountain as me. It's the whole thing of, "Well, you can have it, but you can't have it." It really has to be the whole thing.

Well, that word [marriage], the very word, and I guess all the associations and emotions that cluster around it, ended up being a big part of this argument, didn't it?

Zarrillo: That word has global recognition. Wherever I go in the world, if I bring Paul with me and introduce him as my husband, they know exactly what that means. They know exactly how our relationship is defined. 

Because I keep hearing that that's a big hang-up, the word. It's huge. "We'll let you do all those things, inheritance, taxes, joint returns, hospital visits, the whole deal, the whole shebang. Just don't call it marriage."

Katami: Absolutely. I mean, you don't really celebrate your domestic partnership date, you know. It sounds like more of a business …

Zarrillo: A legal contract.

Katami: ... a legal contract, yes, than actually a contract of love and respect and liberty. The word "marriage" is defined so many different ways for so many different people. But ultimately, it allows protections and it allows access to a language so that we can associate with each other in a specific way. It also allows us to open and broaden that and allows us to associate with the world in a way that's universal and understood.

How long have you been married now?

Katami: We're coming up on a year. 

Wow. And they said it wouldn't last.

Katami: The sky hasn't fallen.

Zarrillo: The sky has not fallen in California.

Now that you've been through all of this, is there something different about the life that goes on in that house that you've shared together for a long time, now that you're married?

Katami: Since being married, everyone asks us the question, "Does 'I do' really matter that much?" But that day came and you thought, "Wow. We worked so hard for this. We dreamed about this moment. Will it change everything?" It changed nothing in our lives. Because we're already like a married couple. Our nieces and nephews call us the old married couple already. But it changed everything in that moment. Saying "I do" changed everything.

Why do you say that?

Katami: It lifted this incredible weight of harm that we felt, and that we suppressed for so many years. We were able to finally look at each other and feel equal, not only in our home, but to our society and in our state and in our country.

Zarrillo: The amazing thing is, our straight friends are still getting married. Our straight friends are still having children. They haven't said, "Wow, Paul and Jeff got married. That's it. We're not getting married." The sky has not fallen in.  We've only strengthened not only our relationship and our communities, but the institution of marriage as a whole has been strengthened by allowing gays and lesbians to be part of it.

This is an unusual marriage, not in the way that people assume that I'm saying that, but that there's actually a stake for people who don't know you, never even seen you before. Nobody cares if my marriage falls apart except people who know me. A lot of people are going to be watching your marriage.

Katami: I would say that equal access to marriage means equal access to divorce as well for people. I mean, people come together and they marry, and for whatever reason, if marriage doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But we had to fight our entire lives to say "I do." There is a commitment level there that we want to really bring a success ratio to this institution of marriage. As human beings, we all live the same way. That's what equality really brings to the table. It brings an understanding to the normalcy of how things are supposed to be versus putting something off into a different category, building a fence around, you know, gay marriages to see whether or not they work or not. 

Right after the Texas sodomy case, Time magazine came out with two versions of their cover showing two very squared-away, bourgy-looking gay couples, one men, one women. The headline was "Is Marriage Next?" I thought, "Wow, is marriage next?" I hadn't even thought about it. Had you been thinking about it, Kris?

Kris Perry: No, actually I think marriage equality seems like a much more recent phenomenon, although of course it's not. The Lawrence case [in which the Supreme Court struck down the anti-sodomy law in Texas] is an example of sort of the worst kind of LGBT discrimination where someone is criminalized for their behavior or who they are. We're so fortunate to have that over with, we've moved to a time when we're talking about something as positive as marriage.

But I remember just before Lawrence talking to activists … about the legal landscape. Some of them said, "Marriage is just not on our radar screen. Let's just talk about equality first." Was the possibility of marriage what created the attraction to marriage?

Perry: It's all about having the same options as everybody else. It isn't even whether or not you ever exercise that option. To be told by your government you don't even get to choose is so harmful. You grow up believing you're a second-class citizen from the moment you recognize that you're gay or lesbian, and until recently you didn't think you ever would be equal. Marriage is the most significant decision you make as an adult. If the government's telling you, "Sorry, when you decide to be with someone of the same sex you don't get to be married, you'll never be as good as everyone else," you are forever in the status of a child essentially in this country.

Benefits of all kinds are delivered to couples and individuals through marriage. If that weren't the case, then we could say something like, "Well, we want to reject that paradigm and go with a different one because it had so many bad chapters in history for women and other people with marriage." But when you look at what the institution does today, it delivers more than 1,000 benefits to couples, and if you tell a whole group of Americans who pay taxes and do everything else they don't get to have those benefits, it is a very powerful, negative message and one we really are happy is starting to disappear.

Sandy, was it a gradual thing coming to the idea of marriage being a possibility, of something that you could have?

Sandy Stier: For me I think it was a little bit less so. I was married to a man for a number of years and had children with him before that marriage ended and I fell in love with Kris. Marriage was something I always thought I had access to. I could not see a legitimate reason for us not to be given equal access to that right as anybody else. 

Well, that set of life experiences actually heightens the contrast for you. I mean, you had been married.

Stier: Somebody once said to me, "What's the difference between gay marriage and straight marriage?" I said, "Well, there really isn't a difference. The difference is, is it working or is it not in your life? Do you love each other? Are you committed to each other?" Gay marriages, straight marriages have the same challenges as anybody else. 

We're all of similar age, so we can remember the colloquial expression "Don't make a federal case of it." You had to really think about what it would mean to make a federal case out of it. 

Perry: The scrutiny is intense, but it's completely, 100 percent worth it. I try and explain over and over again the difference between using the court system to resolve a problem or the ballot box. But the ballot box wasn't working for gays in this country. We will never be the majority. So ballot-box measures on our civil rights will never go well. We were left with really settle for what the majority wants or challenge our state's laws that ban us from getting married. 

Would you recommend to people you just meet to be petitioners in a major, precedent-setting national case, sounds like a great idea?

Perry: If you feel deeply passionate about an issue and you can see no other path forward, I think it's a great option to exercise. I've said I have never been a terribly patriotic person because I have felt discriminated against my entire life. It wasn't until we took Prop 8 to federal court and I stood in that courthouse, I took an oath, I gave testimony under the American flag, that I felt like an American for the first time. Because it was the first time I felt like I was able to express a grievance in a place that was established to resolve them, and that I was getting the same access to that institution for that problem as anybody else. 

Does it operate differently when you hear Kris talk about a whole lifetime of associations, of assumptions that she would be excluded, barred, treated differently? Is it different for someone who comes out later in life?

Stier: I think my experience is quite different in that I did come out later, but coming out later causes a great deal of disappointment in a lot of people that you're close to, because they've known you differently. I think I experienced some of the rejection and the emotional trauma later in life. I was an adult, so it's quite different. To me that's the most important thing possible, is that the work that we do sets that stage so that someday somebody gets to take it for granted.