Brenda Freiberg
lost both of her sons to AIDS. One never even thought
about marriage -- his fight was simply to stay alive. But
her good friend Chief Justice Ronald M. George's
landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage
still made an imprint on her heart.
The morning of
May 15, 2008, I heard some garbled news on the car radio,
something like "gay marriage has been struck down." I turned
from my FM classic music station to check the
round-the-clock AM news networks. This time it was the
opposite: News was just coming in from San Francisco,
but it appeared that the California supreme court had
overturned the ban on gay marriage. I changed stations to be
sure the news wasn’t going to change again. It
was the same. Gay marriage had been deemed legal
by the court.
I pulled over to
the curb and started to cry and called my husband at his
office. “Honey, you won’t believe it: The
court has ruled that gay marriage is legal.” An
intake of breath, a sigh, an “Oh, Lord! This is
amazing; it’s wonderful.”
I said,
“Can you believe Ron’s courage?” We
know the chief justice; we’ve known him almost
all our lives.
I hung up and
called his wife, Barbara, and could barely get the words
out, I was crying so hard. “Oh, please thank
Ron,” I blubbered. She was crying too.
I don’t
know why it hit so hard; neither of our sons were waiting
for the decision, though many of our friends were.
We had two gay
sons who died of AIDS, in 1991 and 1996. Brett, the older,
never even thought about marriage, even though he was in a
long-term committed relationship; he was just focused
on trying to stay alive.
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Brenda Freiberg,
a former corporate executive and deputy mayor, has been
an AIDS activist for over 20 years in the United
States and internationally. She lives in Los
Angeles with her husband, to whom she has been happily
married for 45 years. She has a daughter and
granddaughter.