In late August 2008, Karen Golinski and her partner of 18 years, Amy Cunninghis, gathered with family and friends in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall and exchanged wedding vows, their young son serving as ring bearer.
But as one of the 18,000 same-sex couples who married before voters approved Proposition 8 that fall, Golinski and Cunninghis now find themselves in the midst of a legal firestorm over same-sex marriage that may be one of several to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their marriage license, it turns out, was just the beginning of the fight, not the end.