A Historic First, For The Second Time

This time, it will be legal.

When same-sex marriages start at 5 p.m. June 16, San Francisco will stage a repeat of the ceremony that started the 2004 Winter of Love, when thousands of gay and lesbian couples married at City Hall.

This time, though, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon's wedding will be legal.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said Monday that the ceremony, which he will officiate, will be the only one held in City Hall that day. Martin and Lyon have been together more than five decades, and they were the first couple to marry four years ago. Marriages will begin en masse the next morning. So far, 128 same-sex couples have made appointments to obtain marriage license on Tuesday, June 17.

"What we want, the narrative coming out of it, is about them and what they represent - their story, their history. This is really where it all started," Newsom said of the couple. After the private ceremony, a reception will be held at City Hall for the couple's friends and family, and members of the media.

The couple's first wedding ceremony was very much a below-the-radar affair. City officials rushed to marry them - and eventually, thousands of other same-sex couples - before the courts could order the city to stop.

The photograph of Lyon and Martin's wedding, at which Newsom officiated at City Hall, has been credited by some as being an iconic image that has influenced how people across the country perceive same-sex marriage. The two also were plaintiffs in the recent case in which the state Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage legal.

Lyon and Martin have been together for 58 years and are among the co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. Del Martin was their first president.