Jul 1, 2008 4:55 PM

Court ruling brings long-awaited marriage for couple

When Peter Hayashida learned on the morning of May 15 that the California Supreme Court ruling had voted to legalize same-sex marriage, he text-messaged his partner, Michael Olman.

"It passed. Will you marry me?"

Hayashida, UCLA assistant vice chancellor for external affairs, was in Parking Lot 4 listening to the news on his car radio. "Tears were streaming down my face," he recalled. And although Olman, a TV sound engineer, offered a characteristic joking response — "Let's wait to see how the rest of the day goes" — "This was an important moment for both of us," Hayashida said. The couple could finally be married after 14 years together.

That same morning, Ronni Sanlo watched the TV news with friends and colleagues at UCLA’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Resource Office, which she directs, when the ruling was announced.

"Everyone just started cheering and hugging," Sanlo said. "It was very exciting."

A civil rights activist on the local, state and national levels for more than 30 years, Sanlo said she is thrilled but not altogether surprised by the action. "People have always said to me, 'X can happen ... but not in your lifetime.' Well, I have seen a lot of changes since I came out in 1979. I believe in 'Never say never.' "

And while Sanlo says she has no marriage plans of her own, "I am grateful that people have the option. That's what civil rights is all about — equality. Not special, not better than, just equality."

Hayashida and Olman, also longtime gay rights activists — Hayashida has been a member of the board of directors of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center for the past six years — celebrated that evening at a rally at West Hollywood Park.

"It was truly one of the most moving days of my life," Hayashida recalled. "This is something we have worked very hard for for many, many years."

California's first legal marriages took place on June 16. On June 20, Hayashida and Olman were pronounced "husband and husband" in a civil ceremony performed in a gazebo decked out with flowers in West Hollywood Park.

Hayashida said that while "a piece of paper is not going to change how I feel about my partner," the marriage ceremony turned out to be "much more special and much more intensely personal than I thought it would be.

"I kept thinking, after all these years of fighting for this, marriage is finally a right and a privilege ... and thinking about how proud I am to be a Californian. There's something really special about this moment in time for us and I'm trying to really savor that."

Hayashida's appreciation of the moment is counterbalanced by a serious concern: an effort is underway to overrule the Court's decision via an initiative on the November ballot calling for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Legal experts disagree on what that might mean for the hundreds, if not thousands, of Californians who will have taken their vows by then. Some experts say a ban would put a stop to future marriages but not affect those already on the books, while others think that all such marriages could be nullified.

One strategy Hayashida has been widely proposing to friends and colleagues is to "come out to everybody you know, look at them in the eye and ask them if they are willing to vote to take away your rights to marry your spouse. When you humanize it, it's different. All of a sudden when you see that, it's not 'those people' but 'my friend, Peter ... my friend, Michael.'"

Said Sanlo: "Call me the cockeyed optimist, but I don't believe that [the ruling] will be overturned. I'm hoping that the voters of California who very much value equality will understand that same-sex marriages don't destroy heterosexual marriages. They will see that between June and November the sky didn't fall down."

Meanwhile, the LGBT Center is already planning a campuswide party in October to recognize the UCLA staff, faculty and students who have married since the historic ruling. "We decided this would be a good way to celebrate and honor the people who were courageous enough to claim their equality since the ruling," Sanlo said.

"Every once in awhile I’ll stop and think ... I'm married," said Hayashida. "It's an important protection for us as a couple. This is a right I will never take for granted because I've spent my whole life working for it."

1