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For those of you who missed it, you can now watch the wedding vows of Richard and David Speakman. We took our vows in San Jose on June 17, 2008 at 9:11 (how’s that for an omen) a.m. as the first same-gender couple in the 10th-largest city in the United States to be legally married.

We shared our day with a wonderful female couple, Ronni and Hannah Pahl,  who were married about 6 minutes after us. They were accompanied by their 12-year-old son. In the end we were the first male and female couples to be married in Silicon Valley and Santa Clara County.

When I watch this video I have two thoughts: 1) I need to lose 40 pounds, 2) relief that it’s finally over. After 6 years together, I’m really happy that I can finally refer to Rich as my husband without it just being wishful thinking. And as for the middle-age spread I have going on, I just chalk it up to the fact that for most people, a happy and long relationship + two good cooks under one roof = pleasing plumpness.

Heck, I’d rather be fat and happy than skinny and single any day.

Credit for this video goes to KPIX-TV, the local CBS affiliate.
Unfortunately, the size of the video had to be cropped to fit on my web server, so I had to edit out Ronni and Hannah’s vows.

This article is as close to a marriage announcement as Rich and I got in 2004 after our City Hall marriage in San Francisco Feb. 15, 2004. The local Silicon Valley alternative weekly interviewed me for a story they ran on the event.

ON Magazine | November 2007 (free PDF version)

Features:

• Winter Travel Issue
• News

As usual, I leaf through this magazine when Rich brings it home from the Billy DeFrank Center or some other LGBT function he volunteers for. This magazine used to be called OutNow a LGBT monthly for and about San Jose and Silicon Valley. But under new owners, it was renamed ON Magazine (I really hate post-gay names) and focuses on the entire Bay Area and northern California.

Sadly, the more regional this publication gets, the less focused and interesting it becomes. This month’s issue is no different.

Winter travel: It focuses on cold places and Las Vegas. Since I moved to California to escape the snow and do not gamble, I skipped this section. One article was on the California desert – but it was more of a list – which Wikipedia does better.

That left about 4-6 pages of news scattered among the ads. Here, the magazine is improving under editor Troy May, a man I used to work with when we were both board members of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

There also is a good article by Heather Cassell on the merger of Coors and Miller brewing – which could end the decades-long LGBT boycott of Coors (were you aware if this boycott?).

Another decent article was a collection of new state laws that will affect LGBT people in California as of January1, 2008.

Other news included an article on three new restaurants opening in San Francisco’s Castro district. That fell into the who-gives–shit category. It was clearly written for the purpose of getting more advertising from SF restaurants – as if anyone from San Jose not of the bar-hopping sort is willing to drive 1.5 hours up to San Francisco, spend another hour trying to park and then dodging homeless people, hoping the smell of human waste doesn’t kill your appetite before dinner begins – then afterward paying San Francisco’s outrageous sales tax for the privilege. No thank you.

Aside from a by-the-numbers profile of a local gay business man (another non-subtle try for ad dollars?), the rest of the magazine was about stuff you could read elsewhere online by better writers.

Don’t be fooled by the clouds shown on the Monday forecast below. There weren’t any this morning – just a little marine layer that burned off before 9 a.m. More blue skies. Ack.

Weather for San Jose, CA

62°F Cloudy Wind: W at 4 mph Humidity: 65% Mon 71°F | 53°F Tue 72°F | 53°F Wed 76°F | 55°F Thu 78°F | 57°F

(The following was written on request for the Spring Newsletter for the Billy DeFrank LGBT Center)

By David Speakman

Typical of our Silicon Valley life, my recent marriage can be traded to an email. February 11, a note in my inbox said that San Francisco would grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Three days later on Valentine’s Day, my life partner Rich Bean and I were standing in line outside City Hall in San Francisco along with hundreds of other couples, patiently waiting our turn to say, “I do.”

The line was long – longer than your worst DMV nightmare. Four or five people thick, it stretched for four blocks. By 4:30 p.m. and closing time, Rich and I hadn’t even made it to the Van Ness side of the building where City Hall entrance is. But we were hopeful of getting married and having a Valentine’s Day anniversary. This despite rumors that were passing around that the city had begun turning away people since it was unable to handle the huge crowd.

Moments later, the rumors were confirmed. A city worker apologized and handed us a piece of paper which was to “guarantee” us a spot for the next day. Worse than us, they looked exhausted. These government workers volunteered to give up their three-day weekend, work full shifts all weekend without pay, overtime credit or even breaks for meals.

Still it was heartbreaking. Crestfallen like scores of other couples that day, Rich and I drove back to our home, unmarried. But we were more determined than ever to become husband and husband.

Too excited to sleep much that night, bleary-eyed, we got up early and drove back the next day and showed up four hours before the building opened. But the line at the front of the building had already stretched a full block. Some people had camped out all night to stay in line. Still, we dutifully took our place and settled in for another long wait and hoped for the best, checking (more than once) to make sure we still had our number from the day before – our guarantee.

Luckily we met some of the most amazing people while waiting in line. With 15 and 18 years of respective activism under our belts, Rich and I consider ourselves veterans of LGBT-related gatherings. But this was different; neither pride nor protest. The assembled crowd was not your stereotypical LGBT group, either. Mist of us were in the over-35 age bracket and it was the most orderly, well-behaved crowd of more than 1,000 gay and lesbian people I’ve ever seen.

The mood was that of quiet hopefulness with a light tinge of desperation. We were gathered there that day in fear that we would be sent home once again by overwhelmed city workers who, although marrying one coupe a minute on average, said could only handle 400 marriages that Sunday.

The relative silence of our assembly was only broken by the occasional honking in support or our own cheers as yet one more newlywed couple left the building, The cheers were two-fold, part in congratulations to the newlyweds and part in self-congratulations that the various newlyweds-in-waiting like us were one step closer to our own marriage ceremony.

at 10 a.m. we got the news for the day. The city said ti would process us in two groups of 200. Everyone else had to wait and come back the next day on a first-come first-served basis. We also were told we had to exchange our number from the previous day for fresh numbers which would tell us if we made the cut or not. I started to worry. Like the day before, there already were hundreds of couples in front of us in line.

But as city officials approached us, they were smiling. “You will get married today,” Assessor Mabel Teng reassured us as Rich was handed a numbered piece of paper that looked a little too much like a deli counter number.

He handed it to me and I held on to that little piece of paper like it was the Holy Grail. It said “B201.” Rich and I would be the second couple married out of the second group.

A few hours later, Rich and I were finally ushered into the city hall building to fill out paperwork and be married. Every step of the way, I made sure to thanks every volunteer worker I could. Not really for making history in the gay rights movement, but for working on a Sunday for no pay to allow me to marry the love of my life.

[[--Ed. note: Along with being newlyweds, David Speakman and Rich Bean are members of the DeFrank Center board of directors.]]

One out of four South Bay residents are classified as Asian, ranking second only to those who identify as white and slightly ahead of the region’s Latino population, according to the 2000 national census.

By 2025, the Bay Area will add
1.4 million new residents and 1.2 million new jobs in an increasingly ethnically diverse population of 8.2 million, according to the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). Half of those new residents will migrate to the Bay Area — many from other countries, ABAG predicts.

But the way the U.S. Census Bureau classifies race or ethnic origin can be confusing. For example, the census definition of “Asian” doesn’t match the geographic continent of Asia.

Here is a look at the census definitions of race:

American Indian and Alaska Native: A person descended from any of the original peoples of North and South America. Along with members of American Indian tribes, this includes those descended from the original inhabitants of countries such as Mexico, Cuba and Brazil.

Asian: A person descended from the people of Asia, including China, India, Vietnam, Korea and India. Some Indians object to being lumped into the Asian category, citing significant cultural and language differences. Immigrants from other countries in Asia, such as Iran and Armenia, are considered “white.”

Black: A person descended from the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa or many non-Spanish speaking Caribbean islands including Haiti.

White: A person descended from the people of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Other racial categories of the census include Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

In the last census, the government removed its Hispanic designation. Those identifying as Hispanic can be of any race originating from a Spanish-speaking country such as Spain (white), Mexico (American Indian), Peru (possibly Asian, with its large Japanese population) or the Dominican Republic (black).