Valentine's Day for all

Who's the executive director of the national office of the Metropolitian Community Church, the nation's largest gayische Protestant denomination?

Cindi Love.

The church sponsors an annual Valentines Day campaign in which same-sex couples march down to their local city hall and ask for -- and are usually denied -- marriage licenses. That only reminds one of the mad events of February 2004, when thousands of gay couples streamed to San Francisco's City Hall. The dramatic events began as just another annual symbolic ask-and-be-denied event -- until SF Mayor Gavin Newsom shocked the nation and ordered the county clerk to begin giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But not everyone was ecstatic about it -- not even all queer people. My recent interview with Meredith Maran gave me the opportunity to uncover her April 2004 piece in Salon in which she wondered "Why wasn't I hopping aboard the lesbo love train?" despite living and raising a child with her same-sex partner.

gay marriage, Gavin Newsom, Meredith Maran