By Pat Keeble
Editor, Contra Costa Insider

I've known Steve Weir since he was a kid, or at least since he was the youngest person ever appointed to a vacancy as a director of the Contra Costa Water District. That was around 30 years ago when he was in his 20s. A political junkie who worked for a time for then-state Sen. Dan Boatwright of Concord, he went from the water board to being a Concord city councilman and mayor.
 
It was always pleasant to see him but I often had the feeling he wasn't a happy person. Even in his successes, there seemed to be little inner joy.
 
Few of us knew then he was hiding the fact he was gay. But somewhere along the line he met John Hemm in San Francisco. It was nine years before they became "an item".
 
Weir says he knew then that he couldn't stay in the closet, regardless of the effect on his life as a public servant. John started accompanying him to various events. John's effervescence and vivaciousness quickly endeared him to Steven's friends. And the difference in Steve was remarkable. His smiles were more genuine. He was enjoying life.
 
By then he had been first appointed and then elected as Contra Costa County's Clerk-Recorder. Ironically, that included being in charge of the county's civil marriage division -- seeing to the handing out of marriage licenses and, when asked, arranging marriage ceremonies.
 
When San Francisco started marrying gay and lesbian couples, I asked Steve if he and John, Concord residents, were going to go over the Bay and tie the knot.
 
No way, he said. They wouldn't get married until he could stand in his own office in Martinez to participate in the service he offered to so many but which was denied to him and John.
 
So it was particularly pleasing Tuesday to be present when that happened. With his chief deputy recorder, Barbara Chambers, happily officiating, and about 200 friends, relatives, co-workers and just plain supporters of civil rights, they said their "I do's." As Chambers pronounced them "spouses for life," a huge roar of approval went up from the crowd.
 
The day was slightly dented by the appearance of members of the Kansas traveling hate-monger group that pickets such marriages, as well as the occasional funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq, as they did in Santa Rosa last week. (They wanted to make it known that such deaths are their god's retribution for the nation's "evil ways.")
 
But apparently on Tuesday, the first full day gays and lesbians could officially marry in the state, they were spread pretty thin, for only three showed up in front of the Clerk-Recorder's office. They were dwarfed in numbers by several groups of supporters of same-sex marriage, many from local churches and civil rights groups. They disappeared before the ceremony began.
 
If Steve and John were bothered by the presence of protesters, they didn't show it. One possible reason was probably the presence in the wedding party of some burly men dressed, like Steve, in kilts of the family tartan, some with Marine combat ribbons on their tux jackets. One said he was "one of Steve's many nephews."
 
There is still uncertainty about the future of same-sex marriages, what with the pending vote in November of a state ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to ban them. Should it pass, it's expected there would be a lengthy court battle, possibly ending up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
Meanwhile, Steve and John reflect what we're seeing in news stories from most California counties this week: the utter happiness of people who heretofore have been denied the right to proclaim and certify their love and be entitled to the civil rights that go with legal marriage.