Marriage Equality Day in the Castro June 26, 2013
My Regular Pagan Holiday Post
National Girlfriends Day — August 1
August 1 marks the traditional Celtic holiday of Lammas, the first harvest festival on the pagan Wheel of the Year. According to the National Day Calendar, August 1 is also National Girlfriends Day. Judging by the ads, it might seem like a holiday invented to sell wine glasses and diet aids, but I plan to celebrate it anyway.
What does “girlfriend” mean in lesbianland?
In lesbianland, the word girlfriend carries a lot of weight, and a lot of meanings. It can refer to a platonic friend, a lover, or something in between. Back in the day, it usually meant lover. There simply weren’t enough words to describe us dykes or the nuanced ways we related to each other. For a while, we adopted partner, but that often got confused with business partner.
Very few of us used the word wife, and I never liked it.
As a budding feminist, I wanted no part of marriage. Wives, in my mind, were helpmeets, baby factories, second-class citizens. Property. In some states, it was still legal to kill your wife for adultery. Spousal rape wasn’t outlawed. Until 1974, women in the U.S. couldn’t even get credit in our own names. Before that, we had to depend on husbands.
The feminist movement changed all that. But I still never wanted to be a wife.
Girlfriend. Partner. Wife. Spouse.
Some lesbian couples still use the term girlfriend. They let their friends know they don’t like the term wife and don’t use it to refer to each other. Others in my Boomer generation have come up with alternatives. One couple calls each other spouse and spice.
But I’ve become a wife convert.
I’ve been married twice. Maybe three times.
My ex, Barb, and I went to Vermont after it became the first state to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2000. But in 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom opened the doors to same-sex marriage. Thousands of couples–ourselves included–flocked to City Hall. Even though it wasn’t yet legal at the state or federal level, it felt revolutionary. Queer couples, dressed in their finest, stood in line all day in the rain, in the sun, waiting for a marriage license. Bouquets, cakes and good wishes arrived from around the country. The whole city felt like a wedding party. As City workers, Barb and I even got trained to be wedding officials ourselves. A lovely gender-free ceremony was provided.
Barb, then the San Francisco fire marshal, arranged for the SFFD chief, Joanne Hayes-White, to officiate our wedding in City Hall. In every room, in every hallway, people were saying vows. It was beautiful chaos.
As we walked through the metal detectors and the guard called me “sir,” I turned to Barb and said, “Well, I guess I get to be the husband.”
That was not fair. With her crew cut, she got misgendered as often as I did. Neither of us really wanted to be a wife. But in this country, being legally married means access to health insurance, tax benefits, hospital visits, and death benefits. There were–and still are–good reasons to marry.
The road to legal gay marriage was long and convoluted, culminating with the 2015 landmark civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges. But in 2013, United States v. Windsor overturned key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), reinstating same-sex marriage in California. (Thank you, Edie Windsor!) By then, Barb and I had broken up. But because of legal limbo, we hadn’t been able to divorce. When the Supreme Court’s decision came down, we all ran to the Castro to celebrate. People held signs that said “Freedom to Marry.” For us, it was also the freedom to divorce.
And then came Holly
Holly and I were married on April 19, 2014, at Muir Beach–the site of our first date. The wedding was officiated by our gay cousin Richard, dressed in the robes of his Episcopal priest friend who had been defrocked for gayness. Witnesses were my brother Don and his husband John.
I love introducing Holly as my wife. It’s a simple, meaningful word. A word I once rejected. And, frankly, it helps when talking to straight people, and still sometimes provides a bit of shock value. Everyone knows what wife means.
Oh, and for the record, we introduced our exes to each other. They got married too.
How to describe our relationships with each other? We call ourselves Exes and Besties. But you could call us a gaggle of girlfriends.
Happy National Girlfriends Day to all!
tradeswomn musings 
Thank you for your story. Being an Episcopalian, I find it hard to believe that the church defrocked a man for his gayness. My church has a priest who is a married gay man and his husband also comes to church regularly. I know several gay priests and I found this astonishing. I thought this happened only in the Catholic church! Happy girlfriends day!
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Yes, Minerva, I was surprised too. I don’t know the details, but I do remember he was Episcopalian. It happened many years ago. He lived in Hawaii, but I’m not sure where the defrocking took place.
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Here’s another word — “important” — that separated the casual relations from the big ones.
I’ve heard it a couple times in the last 5-10 years, both times from loong-time dykes, both of whom would be 90ish or older now. S. was a lesbian in the early Maud’s era; A. was doing the woman thing in the mid-late 50’s in Greenwich Village.
I was teasing S. about how she’d dumped me back in the 70s, when she fell in love with a friend of mine. S was my “first” after I moved to SF. It was a wonderful “Welcome to the San Francisco” kind of thing, casual and full of free love. I didn’t care so much that she was taking up with someone else, too, I just didn’t want our thing to stop. But it did.
S. laughed and said, “And she didn’t even turn out to be important!” There was that ever so slight emphasis on important, a little pause before the word was uttered and a particular inflection. I laughed back at her, “Well, I might not have been important, either, but at least I still show up!”
A few years later I was talking to one of my co-workers, A., at A Woman’s Place Bookstore back in mid-70s. I was trying to get her to pin down her relationship with another woman I knew from that circle. A. kind of pooh-poohed it all, saying, “Well, she wasn’t important.” Using that same pause and inflection. Which was to say that the relationship didn’t last. It wasn’t important, it was just a casual thing.
So I’m thinking that before dykes were using “girlfriend, partner, wife and spouse” to name and identify that most special woman in their lives, back before we had so many words and options, that little pause and bit of inflection on the word “important” was a key signifier.
And here’s another word —met — from another friend who was out in those post-WW II days: One afternoon, back in the 80s, said to me, “Have you met Elizabeth yet?” Inflection on met. In this case met had a very different inflection than if she was casually asking me if I knew someone, or if I’d met a new co-worker, or even another dyke. It was the way she said, “Have you met Elizabeth yet…” that told me that she was saying, “This is my new sweetie and it’s deep and intense and wonderful” — and it was. They lasted for as many decades as she had left in her life.
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As always, Carol, Thanks for this history!
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Well, hallelujah! Nice article with your POV. I have another option but now is not the time. Your sweet and candid words resonated with me as I lived thru the irritating period when the words dared not speak their identity. As did y’all.
Still friends with my ex-lovers and happily coupled, legally and otherwise. I am partial to spouse; it covers a lot of ground. I will also use partner to talk about past loves. Wife, no. Just my preference.
I am old enough to look back with great fondness and affection on those partners and relationships that were less so but still meaningful.
Here’s to many joyous occasions on Castro St.! Here’s to love; here’s to affection; here’s to intimacy in all forms. L’chaim!
Sue Sue Englander (she, her)
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Thanks for your POV Sue. We lived through some times!
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Hey girlfriend! You’re important to me! And I will always cherish you as a tradesister, friend, writer, comrade in the tradeswomen’s movement. And I will always feel buoyed by your writing about the lives, communities and herstories – they are so important too!
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Thanks dear sister!
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