A story lost in the buzz and uproar of the onlaught of same-sex marriages that begins Monday night is the political backbiting that has gone on behind the scenes.
The quietly feuding sides are the gay and lesbian community of San Francisco and the two pairs of Los Angeles-based original co-plaintiffs of the landmark lawsuit that last month resulted in the California Supreme Court knocking down the ban on same-sex marriages.
One of those Los Angeles couples, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, will wed Monday evening when they become one of the first two same-sex couples to marry legally in California.
A special arrangement with officials will allow Tyler and Olson to marry early to recognize heir role in the case, and similar arrangements in San Francisco will allow Mayor Gavin Newsom to officiate at the marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Monday evening. Martin and Lyon were the first same-sex couple to marry during the 2004 Winter of Love in that city, but this time their wedding will be legal.
But it is the Tyler-Olson wedding that has stolen the thunder, much to the chagrin of activists in San Francisco, who even employed a public relations firm to help establish it as the heart of the same-sex marriage movement.
Only in the past month, though, has it become clear that Ground Zero of same-sex marriage has been in L.A., specifically the Beverly Hills courthouse where Tyler and Olson had tried unsuccessfully every Valentines Day since 2001 to get a marriage license.
Tyler and Olson, along with two other co-defendants, actually filed the first lawsuit challenging the state’s marital law through high-powered attorney Gloria Allred.
Last week, as they were making arrangements for their historic wedding, Tyler and Olson recalled that their original lawsuit had made negative waves even within the gay and lesbian communities.
"The truth is we started this lawsuit against everybody telling us we would lose,” says Tyler. “But a lot of the people who shunned us for filing this lawsuit are the same ones who are now getting a lot of credit.”
We stepped out of the loop,” says Olson. “(Some gay activists) were mad at us that we didn’t go through a gay law firm to do this. (But) Gloria (Allred) has been a friend of ours for a long time. They kept telling Robin, ‘Wait. Wait. It’ll be political suicide. Don’t rock any boats. It’s too soon. It’s a Republican-appointed Supreme Court.
"I said I’m not afraid of conservatives if they’ll interpret the constitution.”
