February 12, 2004, San Francisco surprised the world when newly-elected Mayor Gavin Newsom told our City officials to issue marriage licenses at City Hall to any same-sex couples who applied to get married during a yearly protest. I first heard of this about 1 p.m. on that Thursday, phoned a friend of mine in San Mateo, and he and his partner managed to get to San Francisco in time that afternoon to get married.

Throughout the course of the next month, San Francisco married over 4,000 same-sex couples. Although most of the people who came to City Hall to get married were from California, some people came from almost every state in the United States as well as from various foreign countries.

Marriage was never a particularly important issue with me (I think the world would be best served if marriage didn't exist at all), but I enjoyed the atmosphere that surrounded us during the month in which same-sex marriages happened, and I managed to talk to many very happy people who lived here or came to San Francisco to get married; their joy at feeling validated by the government was certainly unmistakable. I tried to document this party atmosphere during the course it ran from Feburary 12 until March 11, when the California Supreme Court ruled the city had to stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

This section of my website is dedicated to the photographs and video I took, and words I wrote during that month which Gavin Newsom has coined "The Winter of Love." I call it the "San Francisco Marriage Rebellion of 2004."

My still photograph collection during the Rebellion was not terribly large, as I mostly took video.

Personal recollections includes email I wrote on several mailing lists during the time of the marriages, and a longer essay on my views on marriage in general, politics, the awful Republican in the White House, etc., all mixed up with memories from that very special month.

More recent news since March 11, 2004 (in works).

Movie snippets include some of the video I took. These are available in Windows .wmv format, or Real Media (streaming or downloadable).

A DVD movie of events in San Francisco during the "Marriage Rebellion" of 2004 is available at cost to me and can be ordered from this page.

Viewpoints is planned to be a section espousing other people's views and beliefs regarding same-sex marriage. I do not link to right-wing or religious sites, nor will I publish such information or editorials, as it can be found easily enough online without my help.

Links is presently small but plans to offer access to informative sites which discuss same-sex marriage, or the ideology of marriage (in works).

Contact me regarding these pages. Due to the fact I receive so much spam because my email address has been published for so many years, please use the form on the previous link, so your mail doesn't get lost in my spam filter (until it recognizes your email address, this would happen).