On Valentines Day Hundreds Apply in Vain For Marriage Licenses

Hundreds of same-sex marriage campaigners across the US will markValentine's Day by applying – and being rejected – for marriage licences.

The campaign, organised by a nationwide coalition including Marriage Equality USA and Get Equal, will see couples at 20 locations across six states travel to clerk's offices in a bid to draw attention to the disparity between straight and gay couples in America.

Same-sex marriage has come under the spotlight repeatedly over the last month after a federal appeals court overturned California's ban and Washington state passed a bill legalising it, while in January same-sex couples attempting to get married en masse in South Carolina were politely turned away.

Tiffani Bishop and her partner Iana will be among the up to 50 couples gathering at Travis county clerk's office in Austin, Texas on Valentine's morn. Bishop isn't expecting to come away having tied the knot.

"It's very frustrating. Even little things like, I was sick a couple of months ago and I was thinking: 'Well what if I have to go to the hospital, she can't come and see me.' Legally we are strangers," said Bishop.

"There are other things as well, just being told that you are not as good as the person standing next to you or that you don't deserve the same rights and protections as the person standing next to you. That's never fun."

Bishop, 30, who served in the US Navy between 2004 and 2008 and is now a full-time student, met Iana through mutual friends and talked online before meeting for the first time in New York last year. Two months after that, Iana moved to Austin and the pair have been together ever since.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jarrod Scarbrough, a 38-year-old who works in health insurance, will attempt to marry his partner of 18 years, Les Sowell. At least six couples will attempt to be betrothed in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, with hundreds expected to attend rallies in both cities alongside.

"It really does help to change people's minds and make people realise that this thing called gay marriage is not just an abstract thing that happens in California and New York, but actually affects people that they live around," Scarbrough said.

Stuart Gaffney and his partner John Lewis, who both live in San Francisco, are actually already legally married, one of 18,000 same-sex couples to wed in 2008 before Proposition 8 banned gay marriage in California. They'll both be taking part on Valentine's Day, making the pilgrimage for the twelfth year in a row.

"What we do instead is we thank the clerk," said Gaffney, a policy analyst at the University of California, San Francisco who has lived in the Bay City for 26 years.

"We go up and we present flowers, we've presented Valentine's candy in years past, because we know firsthand that she'd marry us if she could because she did – she married us in 2008."

Gaffney and Lewis are the original plaintiffs in the appeal against Prop 8, which was voted for by 52% of Californians in November 2008, banning gay marriage. That measure was successfully appealed in 2010, a ruling which was upheld by the ninth US circuit court of appeals last week. The case may yet end up in the US supreme court.

Christine Allen, a board member at Marriage Equality USA, which is partnering with Get Equal and other grassroots groups to organise the action, said 20 different events were planned across California, Texas, Virginia, New Mexico, Arizona and Ohio, with marriage attempts potentially happening elsewhere.

The Valentine's protest comes as a study by Pew Research Center revealed last week that public support for same-sex marriage is continuing to grow in the US. Polls in 2011 by Pew found that an average of 45% favoured same-sex marriage, with 46% opposed – "the first time in 15 years of polling that the public has been evenly divided over this issue".

That figure had increased from 54% opposed and 37% in favour in 2009.
"We see that marriage equality is making advances both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion," Gaffney said.

"Events like the Valentine's Day protests are really a way of changing hearts and minds and ideally having one-on-one conversations. It's a way to put a human face on the issue and a way to reach out to people around us about our common humanity.

"What's really shared about marriage is the desire to marry the person you love. That's never more visible than when you're actually at the marriage licence counter hoping to get married.”

Adam Gabbatt in New York  guardian.co.uk,