Head Strong: Let same-sex couples wed in Calif. - and here

Elizabeth Berry Woodrow and Douglas Scott McLaughlin were married last weekend at First Presbyterian Church in West Chester. William D. Hess II presided over a simple yet elegant service with a historic backdrop. The church design was the first commission of Thomas U. Walter, America's preeminent Greek Revival architect, who later would design the dome of the Capitol in Washington.

A piper named Tom Jolly played "Highland Cathedral" as the bride, looking regal, entered the church. Her marriage was a particularly poignant moment for family and friends aware of her successful battle with leukemia several years ago. No wonder the father of the bride, Gordon R. Woodrow Jr., got choked up during his wedding toast as he explained that he and his wife, Betsy, had once wondered whether such a day would ever be possible.

Seated along the aisle toward the back on the bride's side, I noted my doppelgänger in a pew in front of me. I wouldn't meet Bob Lohrmann until the reception, but his shaved head was hard to miss, and I wondered how the two of us looked to whoever was seated behind me.

Before the service, I nodded at the fellow next to Bob. He looked familiar, but I didn't realize until my wife and I chatted with him at the reception that it was John Lilley, guitarist for the Hooters. As we shared a drink, John introduced me to Bob, a theatrical actor and director who is associate artistic director of Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center in Washington. He was a charter member of the People's Light and Theatre Company and has appeared at the Wilma Theater and Walnut Street Theatre, among other local venues.

John and Bob have been together for 30 years.

I drove home thinking about what it must have felt like for two men with a three-decade relationship to watch a twentysomething couple do what gay couples are not permitted to do in Pennsylvania and most other states.

So the next day I asked them. Bob was happy to share the couple's insights.

He made it clear that any qualms he has are with the state and not any organized religion. It's only when those religious beliefs enter the civic discourse that things get problematic, he said.

"I want the same rights Britney Spears and her husband of 72 hours automatically got when they said 'I do' in front of a Las Vegas minister," he told me.

"There are more than 600 federal laws and regulations that kick in with those two words."

He cited the government's classification of a married man and woman as a single entity not penalized by tax issues or laws. Not so for gay couples.

Nor is the right to pass on to each other half of their 30 years of accumulated wealth without the burden of taxation.

They want the same Social Security benefits that heterosexual couples can expect. They also want decision-making powers and access to an ailing partner in an emergency room. Not to mention the ability to sue for wrongful death, if it comes to that.

Those are the issues that affect Bob and John. Same-sex couples face myriad other obstacles, Bob noted, including immigration, adoption, housing, and hiring discrimination, and "don't ask, don't tell."

The common ground they seek is legal legitimacy.

At the reception, Bob's conversational joke was that marriage cheapens the institution of civil unions. But the consequences of the state's position on gay relationships aren't a laughing matter.

He told me that watching the nuptials had made them think about that more than they normally did - a "momentary twinge," as he put it.

"I'm not a victim," he said. "We have had a very good life together, John and I. And I do think that there has been a genuine, perceptible shift in the attitude of the nation regarding the issue of gay rights. But at times it feels as if things are moving at the pace of soil erosion!

"I truly have no doubt that future generations will look back on this with the same revulsion we do now when we see photos of old 'whites only' signs, or at least a little head shake of 'What were they thinking?' "

The pace could soon accelerate. On Wednesday, conservative legal icon Ted Olson and cocounsel David Boies offered their closing argument in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal case questioning the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. Olson and Boies argued that Prop 8 violates the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause.

I spoke with Olson by phone in January, before the trial got under way. Denying gays the ability to marry a partner of their choosing is to discriminate against millions of law-abiding Americans in healthy relationships - and to do so for no reason, Olson told me.

"Individuals whose sexual orientation is different than ours are Americans just like us. They're members of our families. They're our neighbors. They're our coworkers. They're very, very decent people," he said. "And there may be some individuals who are gay or lesbians whose behavior one does not like, but that's true about heterosexual individuals."

There is also the argument raised that marriage between a man and woman must be protected from assault by same-sex relationships. But there is simply no basis for the notion that John Lilley and Bob Lohrmann's marriage would somehow hurt that of Berry Woodrow and Douglas McLaughlin - or any other heterosexual couple, for that matter.

Thirty years is a long time to wait for what Britney Spears walked in and received in Vegas.