If Cristy Chung took the passage of Proposition 8 a little personally, she can be forgiven. She was, after all, one half of the landmark lawsuit that started it all.

In an exclusive interview with the Gay & Lesbian Times, Chung talks openly for the first time about the case that shocked California, the effect it had on her relationship, the hurtful rhetoric of the Proposition 8 campaign.

Here she provides new insight into an infamous incident at her daughter’s school, in which first grade students attended their lesbian teacher’s wedding.

On Feb. 12, 2004, just three weeks into his first term as San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom threw open the doors of City Hall for same-sex couples to get married, and to enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of such a union, until death do they part.

Shortly before the move, Newsom had warned his chief of staff to prepare the city for an influx of marriage petitioners. He was right. In the first week after Newsom’s announcement more than 2,000 couples sought licenses and were married in simple ceremonies, some taking place on the same steps Harvey Milk stood as he told crowds “I’m here to recruit you!”

Chung and her then-partner of 18 years, Lancy Woo, decided to join their friends and headed downtown to get married.

“But,” Chung said, “because the lines were so long, we waited pretty much all day, only to be told they were ending for the day. We were five people behind the cut off, and so disappointed.”

In the days that followed, Chung said, the city continued to marry people, “but the lines were really long and it started raining.” To accommodate the demand and make the process a little more organized, the city began taking appointments. So, Chung and Woo made an appointment to get a marriage license on March 30, 2004.

But a court injunction on March 10 petitioned for by then-California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, brought a halt to the free-for-all in San Francisco, and an end to Chung and Woo’s marriage plans.

Everyone knew it was only a matter of time. Newsom was flouting California law and Lockyer had to act, whether he wanted to or not. Newsom knew the civil rights issue would have to be decided by the courts, and his actions for those 29 days made sure to give the courts plenty of litigants.

Enter Woo v. Lockyer, 2004. Lambda Legal Defense picked Chung and Woo – a solid couple, parents of a preschooler, and quiet activists in their communities – as the lead plaintiffs in a landmark case that would turn California upside down.

What started as a mélange of several individual cases was eventually consolidated into one big case. This was at the request of the plaintiff’s attorneys as well as the State of California. While it was true the cases all differed in small details, the central theme was the same. By consolidating the cases, both sides had the ability to more easily appeal whatever preliminary rulings were handed down. This was a good indication that a long legal fight was brewing.

In total, six same-sex couples and a legal coalition including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Lambda Legal Defense and Equality California would plead their case to the San Francisco Superior Court.

The consolidated case centered around one simple, eloquent argument, excerpted here from the original filing: “Denying same-sex couples the right to marry deprives them of the opportunity to enter into the one government-sanctioned relationship that is the most widely recognized as a symbol of love and commitment and that is automatically afforded great societal respect. Being excluded from this cherished institution brands same-sex couples and their families with a stigma of inferiority. Moreover, because this stigma is imposed by the government, it sends a powerful message that discrimination

against lesbian and gay people and their families is acceptable, thereby encouraging private discrimination and bias as well.”

As both sides geared up for a legal battle in San Francisco, same-sex marriages were being dealt fatal blows in Sacramento.

On Aug. 12, 2004, just 26 weeks after 4,000 same-sex couples tied the knot, the California Supreme Court voided all marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples, ruling that Newsom and other city officials lacked the authority to change California law.

On Dec. 6, 2004, Republican lawmakers in California’s legislature introduced amendments to the state’s constitution that would ban same-sex couples’ access to marriage and even go so far as to revoke all domestic partner rights and responsibilities. These amendments died on the Assembly floor, but served as a chilling prelude of things to come.

After these defeats, and more than a year of waiting, Chung and Woo finally had their day in court.

Legally, their case proposed that the two sections of California Law that restricted access to same-sex marriage were unconstitutional: Family Code Section 300, which says marriage is between a man and a woman, and Section 308.5, which provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is recognized in the State of California.

One year and two days after the case was filed, the Superior Court of San Francisco issued its simple ruling: “… this court concludes that both sections are unconstitutional under the California Constitution.”

The ruling, for Chung and Woo, was bittersweet. Everyone expected an appeal, and no one was disappointed. However, that meant more court appearances, more media events, more of the same circus.

“We followed that case for quite awhile, actually.” Chung said. “We were in court during the whole first round. We did a lot of interviews. We were part of an ACLU film. We did a lot of publicity about it.”

The point of focus for all this attention: the couple’s seemingly idyllic 18-year relationship. But what the lawyers, judge and media didn’t know was that the relationship was crumbling. Shortly after celebrating the initial victory in their fight to marry, Chung and Woo called it quits.

“There was a huge pressure to stay together, because it felt like we were failing the whole LGBT community,” Chung said. “We were afraid we would hurt the case. That part was really hard. We totally felt people were angry at us for splitting up.”

Chung said at first, they tried to keep their break private. “We didn’t tell anyone except our closest friends that we were splitting up,” she said. “When we finally told our lawyers and it came out in the papers, many of our friends were shocked. Breaking up after 18 years is hard, but having it so public, with all that pressure, was even harder. It was a really difficult time.”

As part of the fall-out from the breakup, Chung and Woo had to leave the case which had dominated so much of their lives, leaving the front line fight for marriage equality to people who were still likely to get married.

The appeal moved forward, now without its lead plaintiffs, and Chung got hired on full time at Groundspark: The Respect For All Project, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps educators across the country address issues of bias to create safe and inclusive classrooms. Chung is the community programs manager and uses Groundspark’s educational films and curriculum for work with teachers and administrators and other youth service providers.

She is now in a committed relationship with a fellow mother she met through the PTA for a school attended by her daughter, Olivia. Together the couple is raising three kids, who range in age from 8-11.

But while Chung moved on, the court case took a major hit.

On Oct. 5, 2006, the California First District Court of Appeals overturned the Superior Court’s ruling. In a rebuke of the lower court, the judges wrote, “Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage.

“In other words,” the ruling continued, “judges are not free to rewrite statutes to say what they would like or what they believe to be better social policy.”

Six months later, in April 2007, the case was appealed to the California Supreme Court, which would be inundated with amicus briefs from cities throughout the state, including famously, from San Diego.

Seven months after the appeal was filed, in November 2007, the attorney general’s office, now under the leadership of Democratic former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, found it needed to change the title and summary for a petition that same-sex marriage opponents would be distributing, hoping to get enough signatures to qualify for the November 2008 ballot.

Brown’s office changed the title of the petition from “The California Marriage Protection Act” to “Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment” and famously added the summary “amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

The change put into specific relief a central truth: regardless of how the Supreme Court ruled in 2008, the rights of same-sex couples to marry might very well wind up back in the voters’ hands, where it had never been upheld, in any state, in any election.

Chung hoped for the best, followed the second appeal and waited for a ruling from the highest court in California. While she was waiting, she did what any self-respecting lesbian would do. She went camping.

On May 5, 2008, Cristy Chung was coming out of the forest at the end of a camping trip with her daughter Olivia’s class.

“All around us people were shouting, ‘We won! We won!’” she said.

They were referring, of course, to the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex-marriages in the state.

In the majority opinion, the justices wrote, “We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

The landmark decision was of course heralded by activists and supporters around the country, as thousands of gay and lesbian couples headed for the altar.

For Chung, the verdict was a joyous reminder of where she’d been, and what she had a hand in accomplishing. “I felt proud to have been a part of it,” she said. “People were getting married all around us, left and right.”

But while the verdict was celebrated in gay-friendly circles across the country, it was used as a clarion call for anti-gay-marriage activists, bringing together a strange coalition of Mormons, Catholics and conservatives, and providing staggering campaign funding for their recently approved initiative, soon to appear on the November ballot as Proposition 8.

Perhaps the biggest boost for the Yes on 8 campaign came from an event that, in its inception seemed innocent enough, but wound up proving no good deed goes unpunished.

First, a bit of background: Chung’s daughter Olivia attends Creative Arts Charter School. It’s different than a public school in a few important ways. One, the parents have to choose to enroll their students in the school. Two, the curriculum can differ greatly from the prescribed curriculum in the San Francisco school districts, so long as all educational standards are met, and as long as the students use and pass the state’s standardized tests.

“We chose that school because we wanted Olivia to have a school community that included other students with LGBT families and was openly supportive of families like ours,” Chung said.

Chung estimates that there are at least one or two other students per classroom with GLBT parents, and for both mothers, that provided a level of comfort and security.

One other comforting element was that some faculty and staff were members of the GLBT community. So, when news came that one of the teachers was marrying her female partner, it came as no surprise.

But what happened next quickly turned an idyllic scene into a nightmare.

“A straight parent thought it would be really amazing for the teacher if the kids were there at her wedding,” Chung says. “So she planned a field trip for all the kids to show up at City Hall for the marriage of their favorite first grade teacher.”

The event was to be a surprise, and the instigating parent rounded up some other parents who also thought it was a great idea.

“They got permission from the director of the school and from all the parents of the kids who went,” Chung said. “The kids who didn’t get permission didn’t go. They stayed in another classroom and did school work and were well taken care of.”

Mayor Newsom personally married the couple, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported the story in its Sunday edition.

It sparked a fire, and it didn’t take long for the fire to rage out of control.

Fox News reported the incident as follows: “First Grade Field Trip To A Lesbian Wedding: A school in San Francisco took 6 and 7 year old students down to City Hall to shower their teacher and her lesbian partner with rose petals as they walked out wife and wife.”

Other reports said it was a school-sponsored field trip and that parents had no say or notice of the trip. Some reports said that school busses were taken, and one report even said the children were required to attend.

None of those statements were true, but the damage was done.

Yes on 8 spokesman Chip White called it “overt indoctrination of children.”

Just a few weeks before the election, the incident was used as fodder for urgent Yes on 8 mailers calling for more money – and more came; $24 million just from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its members.

What had begun as a sweet moment for students and their teacher turned into possibly the single biggest blow to the issue, seemingly offering credence to the false Yes on 8 claims that “homosexuality will be taught in schools” without Proposition 8’s passage.

Chung, who had nothing to do with the incident, said, “The families who organized it really felt like it was a powerful statement in support of LGBT people being able to get married, and thought that it would help the campaign. But no. It backfired quite a bit.”

While the misrepresentation of a kids’ field trip was devastating to the campaign, Chung worries that, perhaps more hurtful in the long run, was the rhetoric the Yes on 8 campaign employed.

“A lot of kids went to school and then heard other students at school saying, ‘I’m so glad those gay people can’t get married, because that’s disgusting,” Chung said. “[The Prop. 8 rhetoric] basically sanctioned intolerance, hatred and discrimination, and fueled people’s fears. As a result, anti-gay harassment and incidents of violent attacks against LGBTQ people have increased. It is essentially ‘OK’ to be anti-gay, and to use anti-gay slurs.

“Kids went home and asked their gay parents, ‘Are we still going to be a family?’”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Chung volunteered for the No on 8 campaign, feeling both a sense of obligation and ownership. Like a lot of rank and file volunteers, she also had an issue with the campaign’s overall strategy.

“Why were we holding signs up in the Castro?” she said, echoing a common complaint among campaign observers who thought the mission should be more to change opinions and engage the heterosexual community, rather than spending time and resources to preach to the choir. “We should have been in the Mission District, or in the Central Valley.”

Chung said, “We didn’t do a good job as a campaign against Prop. 8 to really engage all communities in conversations. We didn’t directly confront the negative messages and misinformation they were getting.

“A huge amount of our education went to straight, white, middle-class people. We didn’t reach out to the African American community, or the Asian community. We didn’t show them that there are people in the LGBT community that are also a part of their community. We didn’t do that work.”

When Harvey Milk was rallying the community of San Francisco and the larger gay community across the United States, his central strategy seemed to be to encourage gays and lesbians everywhere to come out of the closet and engage the community.

His was always a campaign about visibility. “It’s harder for people to vote against people they know, when they know how they’re voting will hurt the people they know,” he once wrote.

“That wasn’t the strategy against Prop. 8,” Chung said. “I actually think we needed to channel Harvey Milk and engage ethnic communities and communities of faith.”

On Nov. 4, 2008, Prop. 8, an amendment to the Constitution of the State of California, defining marriage as between one man and one woman was passed by 52 percent of voters.

The margin – only 4 percent – doesn’t aptly express how crushing the defeat was for many in the GLBT community. Quickly, fingers were pointed at what many called the “flawed strategy” of the No on 8 campaign, and even faster lawsuits were filed challenging the validity of the process.

The new legal question: Can a simple majority vote funneled through an initiative process really be used to amend the California Constitution to take away a right the state’s Supreme Court says exists, or does the process have to have more layers?

According to the law, the California Constitution can be changed in one of two ways. For minor changes, that don’t substantively change the purpose of the document, the initiative process is fine, as it requires signatures to get on the ballot (a number of registered voters that equal to a percentage of votes cast in the previous election), and then it has to pass in an election.

However, for substantive changes that alter the way government works or is structured, the process is quite different. It requires a majority of the state legislature to vote in favor of the measure and then submit it to the voters for approval.

Anti-gay marriage activists tried the latter approach in December 2004, and were rebuffed by a largely Democratic Assembly.

The activists then took to the initiative process, and now the ACLU and its legal partners are petitioning the court to invalidate the election results.

It should be noted that this method was tried once, too. In 2008, shortly after Prop. 8 qualified for the ballot, coalition lawyers asked the courts to remove it, saying the initiative process was the wrong vehicle for legislation that would take away existing civil rights.

The Supreme Court rejected the case, without addressing its merits.

However, according to Shannon Minter, the Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who along with the ACLU and Lambda Legal was one of the original litigants for Woo v. Lockyer, the high court’s initial rejection of the writ was not a surprise.

“Historically, courts are reluctant to get involved in disputes if they can avoid doing so,” Minter said. “It is not uncommon for the court to wait to see what happens at the polls before considering these legal arguments.”

After all, if Prop. 8 had failed, it would have been a moot point.

Now, however, the point is anything but moot. Everything is riding on it, and for her part, Chung feels good about the new case and its merits.

The Supreme Court of California has agreed to hear the case in March 2009. The Yes on 8 folks have hired famed Clinton investigator Kenneth Starr to argue their case, and for her part, Chung will once again wait for a verdict. She’ll continue her work, raising awareness in classrooms, and raising her family. Maybe, she’ll even go camping.