In practical terms, the court's decision had little effect on their lives. So Conner was surprised at her emotions when she heard the ruling.
"I held out hope that they wouldn't make any decision to void the marriages themselves," she said. "When I heard, it made me a lot more sad than I expected."
That was a sentiment expressed by many Thursday, frequently followed by a pledge to fight harder for the right to marry, often from people who had never considered themselves particularly active in the movement.
"Having that little piece of paper, just the physical paper with our two names, it was really something. I didn't expect it," said Nina Ackerberg, 38, who is studying to be a special education teacher. "Now I feel I have to do something."
The ruling had an unusually large and complex impact at Ackerberg's home in Berkeley. Half she shares with her partner, Kathryn Lybarger, 37. The other half is occupied by two men, James Martelle and Carlos Yanes, whose marriage was also voided.
In the middle of the two households is a bedroom for the two children of the two couples, Jacques, 3, and Rocio 1. Martelle and Yanes are each the biological father of one of the children, Ackerberg and Lybarger each the biological mother of one.
"Initially I approached it in terms mostly of federal benefits ... Social Security, those kinds of things," Martelle, a political scientist at San Francisco State said of his marriage. Some gay men "were even opposed to marriage on principle. Then once we could get married, we rushed to do it."
When the marriage spree began, Patrick Connors, 38, was working "in an office in a cube." But the act of civil disobedience "made me think about my place in history," he said, stroking the hand of his partner, 38-year-old Robert DeKoch, whom he married on Valentine's Day. He has since quit his job and is enrolling in college to study the history of civil rights.
Besides the emotional letdown are countless quirks of modern married life to which couples were happily adjusting.
Kathy Levinson, an intellectual property consultant, and her longtime partner, Naomi Fine, are in the process of buying property. On recent loan documents they indicated they were married. Now, they're not divorced or even separated, but neither are they married. Their car insurance company required that married couples be listed together on the policy, so they said they changed their policy to indicate they were married.
"And my wife, my ex-wife" Levinson began. "See, what do I call her now? I certainly don't like "ex-wife."
In the end, it wasn't the savings on insurance premiums or the possibility of securing government benefits for a partner that brought real meaning to their briefly legal marriages, couples said. It was the marriage certificate, the titles of "wife" or "husband" or "spouse," the long-awaited acceptance.
Jerry Threet's parents had long resisted even meeting his longtime partner, said the 43-year-old aide to San Francisco City Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. After Threet and Seth Ubogy married, Threet's father invited the couple for a visit.
"The trip home," Threet said, "was a very powerful example of how things changed once we were married."
Times staff writer Lee Romney and special correspondent Bob Hollis contributed to this report.
