My husband and I were pigging out at our favorite all-you-can-eat Korean bbq when the first text came in, “So when’s the big reception!”

We immediately knew what our friend was referring to: Perry vs. Schwarzenegger and the drive to overturn Prop 8, the ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California.

And while we were happy that Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, a Bush-appointee, had ruled Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, we both knew it wasn’t exactly time to celebrate. With every court decision and public opinion poll, our emotions have continued to rise and fall. Yesterday was no different.

You see, my husband, Jeff, and I are one of the 18,000 gay or lesbian couples married in California before the narrow passage of Prop 8 in 2008. In our case, we had a shotgun wedding just days before the election. No frills. No gifts. Just a couple of signatures. And while that was legally good enough to get our marriage grandfathered in, we have been in this perpetual state of marriage limbo.

While we’re happy that our own marriage is legal in the state where we have made our home, we’re still upset that the 1,400 federal marriage rights and responsibilities don’t apply to us and that we continue to pay higher taxes than those in opposite-sex marriages. More importantly, we’re mad that our fellow gay and lesbian couples are not allowed the basic right of marrying the person they love and that our fellow citizens feel they have a right to vote on our civil rights and to impose their religious beliefs on us. 

Trust me when I say that my husband and I want to throw the biggest, gayest wedding reception ever, filled with all our friends and family. But until our rights are truly secured, it’s a little too early to pop the champagne.

Flashback to the fall of 2008.

The November election promised to be a historic one. I had spent much of the previous year and a half volunteering for the Obama campaign, serving on his Asian American leadership council and organizing all sorts of fundraisers, rallies, road trips and phone banks.

I knew there was a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage, but the polling showed that the public was on our side and there was history to be made.  However, as the fall election approached, and the anti-equality side started to barrage the airwaves with lies and fears, the support started wane.

Jeff and I had been talking about a big wedding in the spring, after the elections. But we thought it was better to be safe than sorry, so we decided to do a quickie wedding, just in case.

Fortunately, our friend, the awesome State Controller John Chiang, was gracious enough to perform the ceremony. So Jeff and I, along with Jeff’s sister, our one-year old nephew and a close friend, showed up at his office. We had a two-minute ceremony and signed our papers. Afterwards, we grabbed some lunch, but that was it. It was back to our lives.

A week or so later, election night came along. We spent the day volunteering outside a couple of polling stations. We were confident in Obama’s victory, but still unsure how Prop 8 would turn out.

At the Obama victory party, I remember the excitement and buzz that we all felt at electing the first African American president, but then a few hours later, the sadness, frustration and anger we felt when it was announced that Prop 8 had passed.

As they say with all civil rights movement: two steps forward, one step back. This was definitely one giant step back.

At the time of our wedding, Jeff and I had been together over 14 years, but his parents, who are conservative Christians, had never fully accepted our relationship. While this frustrated us, we did the best we could to deal with it.

That fall, his parents came out from Chicago for their annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage. They invited us to spend the weekend with them at their desert home. In previous years, we would have said yes and put up with his crazy extended family, visits to Pechanga and cleaning their house.

However, this year was different. It was just a few weeks after the passage of Prop 8. His parents had heard from his sister that we had gotten married. But not once did they send congratulations. Not a card. Not a phone call. Nothing.

I felt that we needed to put our foot down, so we said that if they could not even acknowledge our relationship, then we would not be spending Thanksgiving with them. 

They then begged us to come. We compromised and agreed to go for one night. When we got there, they did pat us on the back and said a few thank you’s. (It was still nothing compared to the big wedding they threw for their daughter, but it would have to do.)

Anyway, the next morning, as we were preparing to leave, his parents asked us to sit down, just the four of us. They wanted to talk. I wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, they had been saying crazy things for years.

We know this issue will eventually reach the Supreme Court at least once and that inevitably, we will have our equal rights. (The polling consistently shows it’s a generational thing.)

And when we finally secure our full rights as legally married spouses, we will have a big party and we’ll invite as many of you as we can.