Not rushing off to the courthouse

It’s one thing to fight as a staffer for marriage equality and lose — because you know it’s the right thing to do. It’s another to rest your hopes on a single court decision, hoping will be able to marry the woman that you love — and the court tells you that you can’t.

Most people know that Prop 8 is currently being challenged in federal court. We have an amazing legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies, backed by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. They won in district court and I was helping Rick Jacobs liveblog the trial over at the Prop 8 Trial Tracker, a site I helped create/build while working for the Courage Campaign. It was an incredible thing to be a part of and witness history being made.

But after Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, a stay was placed on his decision. So nobody is allowed to get married while the lawsuit makes it way through the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Our side filed a motion a few weeks ago to rescind the stay, right when Obama decided not to defend DOMA (which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages). Today the court decided to uphold the stay.

Kerry and I had formulated a plan in case they repealed the stay. We’d get our parents to fly out and immediately head to the courthouse, with some friends to be our witnesses. Kerry was looking into if we should include the first part of the Jewish wedding ceremony, which traditionally was the engagement contract. We knew that the people who had previously gotten married during the so-called “Summer of Love” in ’08 had been able to stay married and we assumed that likely would hold true if the stay was lifted.

I knew that the likelihood of the stay being lifted wasn’t big, but it really was our best shot to be able to have a civil marriage from the state of California before our Jewish wedding ceremony. So we were holding out hope, which was crushed today. The rain today matches our moods.

The court case is proceeding so slowly that it is unlikely that there will be a ruling from the Supreme Court by our wedding date, June 3, 2012. We will have to wait until September for the California Supreme Court to weigh in on a standing question that the 9th Circuit Appeals Court asked of them. And in the meantime, we will talk to lawyers to find out if we should get a civil marriage in one of the states where that is legal, instead of just a California Domestic Partnership — especially in regard to our year in Israel, which recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other countries.

Bottom line, the wheels of justice are turning too slowly for us to have a religious and a California civil marriage next summer. But as I told Kerry, today reminded me just how much I want to marry her.

(photo from flickr user deltamike under a cc license)