How Oregon Eloped

ROBBIE MCCLARAN FOR TIME
The First Couple: Newlyweds Mary Li and Rebecca Kennedy at home with their daughter Ava in Portland

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On March 3, 418 same-sex couples received marriage licenses. Nearly everyone was overwhelmed with emotion not just the couples but also the reporters, cops and even snack vendors, many of whom were wiping away tears. "It was like a wall of emotion," says Thorpe, who three days later married her partner. "I've had civil rights victories. But I've never in my life experienced anything like this. It changed my life. I think it changed the lives of everybody who was involved with it."

It certainly changed the life of county chair Linn. The 45-year-old Portland native faces a recall effort, one that the left-of-center Oregonian has endorsed. Good-government types have excoriated Linn and the complicit commissioners for their concealment. "If they can't be trusted to make a momentous decision in an open, fair and respectful manner, they shouldn't be trusted to direct the daily operation of county government," thundered the Oregonian. "They have proved themselves unfit for public office."

The Democratic Party is also livid. Because the county lost control of the timetable, opponents did indeed have time to file for upcoming races. Attorney General Myers and two of the Multnomah commissioners, Rojo de Steffey and Naito, are now embroiled in contested races. So is Supreme Court Justice Rives Kistler, the only openly gay high-court judge in the U.S., who was unopposed before March 3. "The process was so dumbed up that it has been a distraction," says Democratic pollster Lisa Grove. "In the end, I'm not sure whose side it helps."

Then there are the national implications. "The Bush Administration will love to have this debate in a number of key states, including ours, so they can gin up their base," says Stephen Schneider, an aide to Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski. Democrats point out that in 2000 Al Gore won the state by just 6,800 votes; now they fear that conservatives enraged by gay marriage will more than make up that difference at the polls.

Longtime Oregon political organizer Tim Nashif has helped form a new group, the Defense of Marriage Coalition, which is hoping to place an anti-gay-marriage initiative on November's ballot. The state supreme court has yet to approve the measure's language a routine but time-consuming step and it's unclear whether the coalition will have time after court approval to gather the 100,000 signatures needed to put the initiative before voters. Nashif, however, is confident that anger will fuel an unprecedented petition drive. "I have never seen people respond to anything like I have seen them respond to this," he says.

For her part, Linn suggests that much of the opposition to the county's process for issuing marriage licenses is really just conservative opposition to gay marriage. "Process will always be the argument against an outcome that ... made people uncomfortable," she says. Every day, "elected officials come up with approaches to a variety of different things, and they talk to certain people, and when it's brought to a point where it needs to be either announced or drafted into a piece of legislation, it goes public. This is standard." (In this case, of course, there was no legislation just a directive from Linn.)

Linn also laughs at those who say she contrived the marriages for political advantage. "This has been miserable ... My political career is absolutely on the line," she says, at a time when her dad is dying of cancer, her son is graduating from high school and she is about to marry for the second time. Linn issued an apology last Thursday for the lack of "public involvement in decision making, including ongoing, open communication"--though she did say, as she often does, that it was her "obligation under the Oregon constitution to support marriage equality."

The same-sex couples who wed in Oregon may not be married forever. Judge Bearden's ruling that the state must recognize the marriages is being contested, and everyone is waiting for the higher courts. But Roey Thorpe got what she wanted: the pro-gay side goes into that case with the p.r. armor of 6,044 happy newlyweds. Those who oppose same-sex marriage must now argue against rights already granted. "I give them credit for achieving that beachhead," says the G.O.P.'s Mannix. "But will that short-term objective be worth weakening their long-term objectives?"

Linn answers this way: "I only wish [opponents] had seen the looks on the faces of people outside our building the day I made the announcement ... For them, we opened up the opportunity for a lifetime dream." Sometimes you have to lay everything on the line to make a dream come true.