San Francisco

San Francisco marks 20 years of same-sex marriages

NBC Universal, Inc.

Monday marks a major Bay Area milestone.

Twenty years ago, San Francisco started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The city and then-Mayor Gavin Newsom defied federal and state laws, and over the next month more than 4,000 marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples.

Those unions were eventually nullified.

But 11 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriages should be federally recognized.

To this day some fear a conservative high court may one day revisit the issue and overturn the law in the same way abortion access was reversed.

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