California

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Del Martin, seated, and Phyllis Lyon were the first same-sex couple in San Francisco to exchange wedding vows on Monday. Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, presided. The couple has been together since 1955.

NYTimes: Clerks’ offices across the state braced for a crush of marriage applications as California became the second state, and by far the largest, in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. In Bakersfield, where couples exchanged vows on a tree-lined patio outside the clerk’s office, reporters and photographers outnumbered people applying for marriage licenses on Tuesday morning. There were no protestors in sight.

“We are so happy, we can’t stop smiling,” said Kathi Gose, 52, who wed Keren Briefer, 45, in Bakersfield on Tuesday morning. The couple, who have been together for 11 years, plan to change their surnames to Briefer-Gose. “We want to have the same rights as any other American citizen,” said Ms. Gose.

Michael D. at Balloon Juice:

Lyon and Martin will now be able to inherit from each other, have hospital visitation rights, and share in the many of the same things straight couples do (with the exception of federal benefits.) What won’t change is the state of your marriage. You and your husband or wife will still be able to love each other, raise your kids, file a joint tax return, and all the things you’ve been doing together for years. And if all that comes crashing down around Tony Perkins and Jim Dobson because Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin got married yesterday, they may feel the urge to scapegoat them. If allowing gays to marry is going to affect their marriages, then they probably just have shitty marriages to begin with.