"I WONDER WHAT HER GIRLFRIEND THINKS"

It's a hot day here in San Francisco, and not only because of the 95° "earthquake weather" heat, necessitating a prolonged dousing of my gardens, but because the California Supreme Court ruling has just come in stating that the California legislative and initiative measures limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violate the state constitutional rights of same-sex couples and may not be used to preclude same-sex couples from marrying. (In re Marriage Cases, S147999.)

Whichever way you land on the issue of gay marriage, this ruling is one hot decision. As incremental advances go, it's to be celebrated; but, I can already hear the McCain campaign capitalizing on this to deter voters through drummed-up fears away from the truly fearful issues at hand; the ones the Republican Right specifically do not want voters to focus on (being that their fingerprints are all over the triggers).

No sooner were speeches being made down at the Civic Center institutions than I received a phone call from someone who overheard two men talking to each other while Supreme Court Justice Carol Corrigan faced her public. "I wonder what her girlfriend thinks?" the one said to the other. While watering my front yard, my neighbor called out to me, "Your former boss voted the wrong way."

For seven years I was employed as judicial assistant to Associate Justice Carol Corrigan when she served on the California Ninth District Court of Appeal, shortly before her appointment to the California Supreme Court. Her longstanding live-in relationship with an East Bay nun was well-known. I'm not suggesting that Justice Corrigan is a practicing lesbian; but, I am pointing out that she has had a working same-sex relationship of many years that most of those who knew her accepted without judgment. I found her partner to be a lovely woman and was even quite fond of Justice Corrigan herself, until the last year or so of my employment in her chambers.

I am a long-time survivor of the HIV virus, having seroconverted back in the mid-80s. As most of my brethren at that time, I was convinced I would be dead within a few years. Instead, I watched my partner of 12 years seroconvert and succumb to the virus, passing away in September 1996. Though we exchanged bands, we never had the chance for an official sanction of marriage. In the mid-90s, it seemed unimaginable, certainly not within our lifetimes sharply curtailed by the pandemic. Along with him, I lost several of my friends. These were incendiary years where fire gave me a voice. I wish I could say I am all over that now; but, truth is, grief has its gravitational force and I live within an occupied zone that I call the Death Horizon. I used work as a motivational force to keep myself going. It was all I had, having lost those I loved.

In 2005, the virus caught up with me and I began to experience severe symptomology. I suffered inflammation of my joints and was in excruciating pain. Put through a battery of tests over a course of seven months, it was never fully determined what had gone wrong with my body though high dosages of an anti-inflammatory Indocin were prescribed so I could handle the pain and regain ambulation. By then, however, the damage had been done and Justice Corrigan had decided I was no longer fit to work in her chambers and?over my remaining time at the court?systematically made it more and more difficult for me to fulfill my duties. After years of faithful service, I had thought I would be allowed some compassionate leeway to find a way to continue working in her chambers. Instead, I was met with brittle and punishing antagonism. I'm not suggesting that Justice Corrigan was incorrect in her assessment that I was no longer physically capable to perform my duties in her chambers?once I got over my own denial, I had to accept my health was failing?but, I was stunned by her callous unwillingness to explore alternatives, eventually forcing me to resign, risking health and home under such drastic pressures.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the day I was forced to resign. Finally recognizing that I was becoming physically incapable of continuing my work, I went into Justice Corrigan's chambers and admitted as such and asked for her to bear with me until the Fall when I would try to transition out of her chambers. Justice Corrigan told me that she had much affection for me and to take all the time I needed to transition. A half hour later I received a phone call from the Clerk of the Court stating my resignation papers were ready to be signed. I was shocked. Apparently Justice Corrigan had walked away from our conversation straight to the Clerk and told her to get rid of me with all the affection at her disposal. So much for taking all the time I needed to transition out of her chambers. Before I could even finish my two weeks notice, I was rushed to Emergency with a life-threatening staph infection and nearly lost use of my left hand. I never returned to her chambers. I received one phone call from her while I was in the hospital. She told me that?if I ever needed her help?to call on her. After that, complete silence. I remember months later an attorney-friend stating to me that he found it morally reprehensible that she had not followed up to see how I was doing. I laughed at the folly of such a presumption of moral civility.

I went through a year of hospitalizations, operations, and subsequent years of therapy to overcome the suicidal depression that followed in the wake of Justice Corrigan's constructive discharge. Taking her at her word, I contacted Justice Corrigan around the time I was fighting for my disability benefits. My attorney suggested that if she would be willing to state on the record that I was physically unable to perform my duties, that it would help secure my benefits. Note: I wasn't asking her to say I was doing a good job. I was wanting her to admit that I was doing a bad job. But she wasn't willing to do that. She wasn't even willing to address me personally. Through the Clerk of the Court she advised me that nothing she said would help me; but, she wished me "the best." Eventually, I settled on a "live and let live" policy as I secured my disability benefits on my own through the help of my physicians and continued on past my life at the courts. I've maintained that live and let live policy these last few years. Until hearing of this morning's decision and reading Carol Corrigan's dissent to the majority opinion. In fact, I can no longer use the term "Justice" with her. I have made that mistake one too many times in the past.

Carol Corrigan is a hypocrite. She is a political animal who takes pleasure in baring fang and claw when it serves her idea of the letter of the law. She clings to the words in her statutes like priests cling to inbred rituals, with the same elitist exclusive fervor. But her words are not to be trusted and I can no longer keep silent about that. With colloquial charm Carol Corrigan will have you believe she's from the salt of the earth; but, truth is, she places herself above others and preens on privilege and flexes power capriciously. Worse, she uses law to disclaim responsibility for the very real human issues at core in this debate.

I had many regrets when I lost my employment at the State Court of Appeal and when I was constructively discharged from Carol Corrigan's chambers. Today, I feel each and every one of those regrets evaporate in the city's reigning heat wave. Today, I am grateful to no longer be in her employ. Had I still been working for her, today would have been one of great shame for me and one of necessary resignation. As it is, I can take pride in knowing she has revealed herself and that we all see her for who she is. This is not just about an unpopular dissenting opinion. This is a calculated effort on the part of a judicial officer to use the law to justify the denial of basic human rights.

In her dissent Carol Corrigan has written that her personal sympathies are with the plaintiffs challenging the bans on same-sex marriage. But she states the courts should allow the political process to address the issue. I have learned through personal experience that Carol Corrigan's personal sympathies are vacuous and that her reliance on process is the way she gets what she wants.

"We should allow the significant achievements embodied in the domestic partnership statutes to continue to take root," she's written. "If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box." How easy is it to say to a victim: let the mob decide? No, Carol. That is where judicial process steps in to save the victim from the mob who?more often than not?like racists in the mid-40s, used the legislature and the convenience of law to sustain control. Just as the California Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage in their 1948 decision Perez v. Sharp?a decision that the United States Supreme Court did not follow until 1967?once again, the California Supreme Court guides the way. I applaud them for their decision even as I wish Carol Corrigan "the best" in her dissent.

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