Kamala Harris reunites with gay couple she married 20 years ago on Valentine’s Day

Vice President Kamala Harris has been a part of history several times. She’s not just the first female and first Black second-in-command; during San Francisco’s “Winter of Love” in 2004, she was among the first government officials to perform a same-sex wedding.

She did it on Valentine’s Day. Now, 20 years later, she was reunited with the loving couple in a Facetime conversation to help them celebrate their wedding anniversary.

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Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s (D) unprecedented decision to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in the city caused upheaval in California. It lasted for 29 days before the state supreme court shut it down and nullified all of the 4,000 weddings that had taken place.

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Harris, then a district attorney, was one of the officiants. Bradley Witherspoon and Raymond Cabone were one of the couples.

“It was a very emotional day. I remember crying, and looking over and seeing Kamala crying, and hugging each other at the end of it,” Cabone said. He had previously worked for a consulting firm that did business with the city and knew her professionally.

“I never thought about getting married and what that would mean, but once we got the opportunity to do so, it meant a lot to me,” Witherspoon told Harris yesterday. “I think that was part of the emotion as well; being denied something for so long, thinking that it would not happen in my lifetime, and to see it happen.”

“I reflect on that weekend with such a fond memory of what it meant for so many people. But for the two of you, I mean, I didn’t fully appreciate how many people were in loving, committed relationships, and just legally were not able to seal the deal … and how unfair that was,” Harris responded.

The couple had been together for 20 years before they married in 2004. They met in line at a McDonalds. Witherspoon asked Cabone if he could sit with him and they’ve been lovin’ it ever since.

While their 2004 marriage was nullified, they were remarried ten years later when it became legal again. Then as California’s attorney general, Harris had refused to defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriages and performed some of the state’s first legal weddings.

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