Clergy, same-sex couples, friends and family, 40 to 50 in total, gathered to celebrate the first anniversary of the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage and to mourn its subsequent revocation last week at Mission Hills United Church of Christ. The service was one of more than a half dozen organized by Equality California in collaboration with local churches across the state.

“Tonight we come together as people who are celebrating the gift of marriage,” said Mission Hills United Church of Christ Rev. Scott Landis.

“We have also come together to lament that that right has been taken away by a segment of our population here in California. We have come together to pray. We have come together to recommit ourselves to make sure that right is given to all citizens in the State of California just as soon as possible.”

The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 last November, revoking its May 2008 decision to allow same-sex marriage, but upholding the marriages of more than 18,000 same-sex couples married in California last year between June and November.

Hillcrest residents Robert and Miguel Close-Rodriguez are among them. Landis married the two last summer. They along with another same-sex married couple, spoke at the Mission Hills service about their experience in getting married.

“We exchanged vows in this church with Pastor Scott Landis. And to say ‘I do’ in front of your friends and family, it’s just indescribable. And that’s what we’re here to celebrate today,” Robert said.

“We have been together for almost a decade. We’re registered domestic partners. We have a trust, a power of attorney, advanced medical directive. Lawyers love us,” said Carin Canale, who married her partner Hillary Theakston last June.

Marriage gave the two couples a type of social recognition that their domestic partnerships or civil unions could never give, the couples said.

“Now our domestic partnership was clearly not the same as our legal marriage. It just simply wasn’t. It was just a piece of paper that we printed out on our computer, a piece of paper that all you needed to do was get notarized and sign our names to. That is clearly not marriage,” Robert said, adding that “marriage is more than a legal document. It’s being recognized by your society, by your friends.”

“Until that day we did not fully appreciate the fact that civil unions are simply not the same as marriage. Getting married was an important milestone for both of us. Because it was clear that it meant something different to our friends and to our family,” Carin said.

“For gay and lesbian persons who have been told for most of our lives that we are second-class citizens, people to be feared, those who cannot serve openly in the military and those that don’t deserve the same civil rights as others, this evening’s celebration is bittersweet,” Landis said, adding that no religion should determine the civil rights of any group.

“I believe that individual faith traditions can and should make their own decisions regarding marriage. No one faith should dictate what civil protections Californians receive under the law,” he said.

Denying gays and lesbians the right to marriage is denying them a birth-given right, said Rev. Janine C. Stock.

“In my joy for you, my heart is also a wound for the countless others who have been shut out of what is their birth right as human beings, human beings made in God’s image. The birth right to fully express wholeness and happiness, which includes the right to be married,” Stock said.

Coming from both a Christian and Catholic background, Stock said that real Christians and Catholics do not engage in the oppression of gay and lesbian people.

“To continually demean, treat less than, hurt with words or with sticks is not a Christian or Catholic concept,” she said and asked attendees to speak up when they hear religious leaders speak hatefully about gay and lesbian people.

“To those who listen to prejudice from the pulpit and know that this is wrong, I also ask you to fast from supporting hypocrisy and prejudice from the pulpit. I ask you to be the voice in your congregation. I ask you to challenge those who would hurt or demean,” Stock said, adding that those who do not speak up contribute to the problem.

“Everyone who sits apathetically in the pew in some way contributes to the problem and the prejudice. Each and every single person is called to do social justice,” she said.