Couples Vow to Fight for 'Little Piece of Paper'

BluJay Hawk had to call her wife, Alma Hawk, and, on Alma's 30th birthday, say that they weren't legally married anymore.

Conner and Smith's wedding reception in Minnesota is still on for the weekend, and Alma Hawk's birthday party in Los Angeles was interrupted just long enough for the couple to speak at a rally in support of gay marriage.

As quickly as life had changed for nearly 4,000 same-sex couples last winter when San Francisco began issuing them wedding certificates, it changed again Thursday when the California Supreme Court voided their unions.

As before they wed, the couples still went to work Thursday, put their children down for naps and made dinner. Knowing they were part of a long-shot legal experiment, many couples said they had believed they were prepared for the court's ruling. But they weren't, many said afterward -- not quite.

"The feeling I experienced getting married to Alma on Feb. 20, 2004, was the most important moment of my life," said artist BluJay Hawk, 29. "What a terrible phone call I had to make today."

Long a topic of hopeful discussion among gay and lesbian activists, homosexual marriage in the United States had nonetheless been viewed by many as something to work toward for the next generation, perhaps, or the next. Then, in April 2001, seven same-sex couples in Massachusetts sued for the right to marry, and the subject soon became part of a national debate.

Despite the national discussion, few were prepared when, on Feb. 12, San Francisco issued the first wedding license in the United States to a same-sex couple, uniting Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, and kicking off a frenzied three weeks of weddings and protests, tearful celebrations and furious legal challenges.

Longtime partners, Conner, 36, and Smith, 35, had already been receiving domestic partnership benefits through Conner's fundraising job at a Bay Area hospital. Each had long before arranged for the other to have power of attorney in case one died or became incapacitated.

"We were already as married as we could be in the eyes of the law," Conner said Thursday.

But they weren't married. And then suddenly they were, the second couple to be granted a license. And then, suddenly again, they weren't.