Longtime Dallas activists are among relatively few from North Texas planning to wed

Steve Atkinson and Ted Kincaid, left to right, are planning a trip to California to be legally married there.

Louise Young and Steve Atkinson have spent most of their adult lives fighting for basic civil rights for gays and lesbians.

And neither Young nor Atkinson, both longtime activists in Dallas, ever envisioned the day when they’d have the opportunity to legally marry their respective partners on U.S. soil.

But now that the opportunity has arrived, they plan to take advantage.

Young, 60, said she plans to marry her partner of 37 years, 61-year-old fellow activist Vivienne Armstrong, in San Mateo County, Calif., during the third week of August.

Young and Armstrong are perhaps Dallas’ version of 83-year-old Phyllis Lyon and 86-year-old Del Martin, the legendary couple of 51 years who were the first tie the knot in San Francisco after the California Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage took effect earlier this week.

“We want to take advantage of this moment in history,” said Young, one of the city’s pioneering lesbian activists who was the first female president of what is now called the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance. “It is what we’ve worked for our whole lives, even though certainly in the beginning, when we were young activists, we sure didn’t see marriage on the horizon. But we wanted to be treated equally under the law, and certainly what’s happening in California is a big step toward that.”

Atkinson, 45, also a former DGLA president, said he plans to marry his partner of 19 years, 42-year-old Ted Kincaid, on or about July 18 in San Francisco.

“Ten years ago, I would have never thought by this point we would be anywhere remotely close to where we are on the issue of marriage,” said Atkinson, who’s now co-chair of the national board of governors for the Human Rights Campaign. “When you work so hard for so long for our basic civil rights, it’s nice and somewhat gratifying to feel like we’ve gotten there a little bit.”

Young and Armstrong, and Atkinson and Kincaid, are among the relatively few lesbian and gay couples from North Texas who’ve publicly announced plans to wed in California.

Atkinson said he’s a little surprised that more same-sex couples from Texas aren’t planning to do so, and that there hasn’t been more fanfare in the local LGBT community about the California Supreme Court’s decision.

While California is the second state to legalize gay marriage, it is the first in which couples who reside in other states are eligible to wed. Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2003, but couples from out of state can’t marry there.

On top of the California decision, officials in New York have said they plan to recognize same-sex marriages from elsewhere, meaning gay marriage is now effectively legal in the country’s two most populous states.

Patti Fink, current president of DGLA, said she thinks more local same-sex couples may make plans to marry in California now that the ceremonies have actually begun.

Others, however, said local couples likely are deterred by the knowledge that their relationships won’t be recognized in Texas, which has a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Gay-rights groups have warned couples against traveling to California, then returning to their home states to file lawsuits seeking recognition of their relationships, for fear that the cases could set bad legal precedents.

Same-sex couples also have been warned that they may have difficultly obtaining divorces if they marry in California. Although California has no residency requirement for marriage, it has one for divorce.

And California gay marriages are at risk of being invalidated pending a state constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot there in November.

But Paul Scott, executive director of Equality Texas, said for some couples from the Lone Star State, the question of whether to marry in California may boil down to economics.

“It could be as simple as the cost of airfare,” said Scott, who heads the statewide LGBT equality group. “It could be an economic consideration, as well as the fact that many people may be on hold waiting for the ballot initiative to be determined.”

Cindi Love, executive director of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Com-munity Churches in Abilene, said she isn’t buying the arguments against same-sex couples from Texas marrying in California.

Love, 53, the former pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Dallas, said she plans to marry her partner of 28 years, 64-year-old Sue Jennings, in Los Angeles later this month.

“They [couples] have to say, I am either satisfied with what I have, and I believe I can’t get anything better, or I am not satisfied with what I have, and I’m going to do whatever I can to make it better,” Love said. “To me this is no different than the moment in time when people said: ‘You need to get out and carry a sign that says we will no longer tolerate the death of all of our people to AIDS. The federal government must provide medical research and medications.’”

Love, like Young and Atkinson, said she has no intention of filing a lawsuit seeking recognition of the couple’s marriage in Texas. However, she said she plans to continue what has been a tradition in the MCC of members traveling to county courthouses throughout the country on Valentine’s Day and requesting marriage licenses.

Love and Jennings were married in Canada in 2005.

“We really want to be married in the country where we were born, where we hold our citizenship,” she said.

Atkinson said he and Kincaid also were married in Canada and obtained a civil union in Vermont.

“We are firmly committed to each other and plan to spend the rest of our lives together, and if we could have been legally married, we would have done it many, many, years ago,” Atkinson said. “It’s just going to feel good that at least somewhere in this country, we actually can be legally recognized as being married.”

Young said she and Armstrong obtained a civil union in Vermont and actually moved there for a time before returning to Texas. However, they’ve held off on marrying in Canada with the hope they’d be able to do it in the U.S.

Young said the couple will be married in California during a regular visit to see Armstrong’s sister and her three kids, who are ages 16, 21 and 26.

“All they’ve ever know in their lives is Aunt Vivienne and Aunt Louise,” Young said. “We’re just thrilled that we’ll be able to share it with them.”

Asked whether she expects the couple will ever be able to marry in Texas, Young said she’s unsure but optimistic.

“I think that it may come, say, in the next 20 to 30 years, and God willing, we’ll be here,” Young said. “But if we’re not I hope that in a small measure it’s by our example, and the way we lived our lives and what we stood for, that those who follow after us can enjoy it, because that’s what it’s all been about.”