Drop the charges against Equality 9

ON AUGUST 19, 2010, I went to the San Diego County Clerk's Office with the genuine hope that our friends Tony and Tyler Dylan-Hyde might be allowed a marriage license that day. They had made an appointment after Judge Walker ruled that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional on August 4, 2010, prompting the San Diego County Clerk's Office to announce that they would begin accepting appointments for same-sex couples to be married, beginning on August 19.

By the 19th however, the 9th Circuit had made the decision, based on an appeal from the bigoted authors and defenders of Prop 8, to impose a stay on Judge Walker's historic decision, delaying indefinitely what should have been a step in the progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in this state.

When Prop 8 was first passed, it was immediately challenged in court by the ACLU--and no stay was imposed to stop the marriage ban on same-sex couples while its constitutionality was debated in court. But when the backers of Prop 8 wanted to delay its legal overturning by a California State Supreme Court judge, their wish for a stay was granted.

The Dylan-Hydes and one other same-sex couple, Ditchi Davila and Claire Manning, were refused appointments and their marriage licenses that morning. Nine of us, who had come in support of their right to marry--including another couple, Michael Anderson & Brian Baumgardner, who also sought to get married that day--were not immediately ready to leave. We announced that we would remain peacefully, but stay until the county clerk could respond to the legal argument presented to him that day by the Dylan-Hydes that it was in fact the duty of all California clerks to uphold the law of this state as ruled by a California Supreme Court judge on the case.

I don't believe, and will never believe, that any of us committed any crime during our visit to the county clerk's office that day by staying after some of our friends were denied their appointment.

Nevertheless, we were forcibly removed before 9:30 in the morning, and brought to jail in handcuffs. None of us was able to return to work after our morning's appointment, since we were not released until late in the day. Contrary to popular belief about some people who commit what is often called "civil disobedience", it was never our desire or intention to be arrested on that day, as we tried to make clear in a letter we faxed to the county sheriffs that morning.

Yet, the nine of us are now facing charges from the city attorney for choosing to sit in to demand our civil rights on that day.

It is my belief, however, that if the city attorney doesn't drop the charges against us, it will be a reflection not on our "criminality," our moral character or behavior as residents of San Diego, but on the backwardness of the city of San Diego in upholding a law that continues to ban same-sex couples from marrying.

Rosa Parks should never have been arrested for defending her right to sit at the front of a bus in Birmingham, Ala. Susan B. Anthony should never have been charged and fined for daring to exercise the same right to vote in this country that her male counterparts had. Neither should any of us be tried or charged for simply demanding the right of our friends to be married by the State of California after Judge Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional."

Sign a petition to drop all charges against the Equality 9.