LB Mayor Marries Same-Sex Couple

The grooms were beaming as they exchanged vows in downtown Long Beach Monday at the newly opened Harvey Milk Park, where a small clutch of well-wishers bore witness to the mayor conducting his first marriage.

"It was an honor," Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster told Bob Crow, co-founder of Long Beach Gay & Lesbian Pride, Inc., and his partner, Tony Almeida.

The betrothed are Bob Crow, co-founder of Long Beach Gay & Lesbian Pride Inc. and partner Tony Almeida, of North Long Beach. They wore matching plaid shirts, black vests and yellow rose boutonnieres. After The U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that restored gay marriage to California, asked Foster to marry them in a civil ceremony.

It was the first conducted at the relatively new Harvey Milk Park on Third Street west of Long Beach Boulevard, said Long Beach Vice Mayor Robert Garcia, an openly gay City Council member who attended the marriage ceremony.

The couple said they would forgo a honeymoon. Almeida said their life has been a honeymoon and besides, he said, referring to their four-legged family members, "we have three children." 

They were among the same sex couples who rushed to the altar, according to Dean Logan, Los Angeles County's registrar-recorder/county clerk. He said more than 500 couples completed online marriage license applications between 4 p.m. Friday, when a federal appeals court lifted a stay and allowed same-sex weddings to resume in California, and Monday.

The decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that proponents of Proposition 8 -- which banned same-sex weddings in California -- did not have legal standing to appeal a federal judge's ruling that the measure was unconstitutional. Anticipating a crush of same-sex couples anxious to wed, the main Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office in Norwalk will remain open until 7 p.m. today and tomorrow. A long line of people showed up at the start of business today. Logan himself officiated over the first same-sex ceremony of the day at the office.

--City News Service contributed background reporting.