In the spring of 1970, two gay men, Richard Baker and James McConnell, applied for a marriage license. They were denied the request by the county clerk, Gerald Nelson, because they were two men.

Unwilling to take "no" for an answer, the couple filed a lawsuit on the grounds that Minnesota did not explicitly outlaw marriage between members of the same-sex. Baker and McConnell 's case made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that by being denied the right to marry they were also being denied the right to Due Process, as well as their 14th and 9th Amendment rights. However, the Supreme Court dismissed their case in 1972.

I honor these courageous love warriors who were willing to stand up to unjust laws and to put a face and a name on the marriage equality cause four decades ago. I have no idea if these unsung gay heroes are still alive today. If they are, I hope they are celebrating the fact that Minnesota is now the 12th state in the nation to recognize same-sex couples' fundamental right to marry.

Same-sex couples can exchange "you betchas" and "I dos" come August 1st.

Bell has spent his entire life devoted to his spiritual community. However, he realizes and acknowledges that "sometimes people grow in ways that are incompatible with the institutions they have been a part of."

This is clearly becoming the case for many 7th Day Adventists (both LGBT and straight allies) who cherish the traditions of their religion, but part ways with archaic traditions and views on social issues; including the exclusion of women from church leadership roles and acceptance of LGBT people. The progressive factions of the 7th Day Adventist church are truly at odds with the patriarchal majority.

I applaud Bell, a straight ally, with a wife and two children, for his willingness to take a stand for love and equality even at great personal expense. It is this kind of leadership and integrity that moves mountains. It takes tremendous courage to stand up for what you believe in and yet if we don't muster up the courage our world will not change. I invite us to look into our own lives and ask ourselves "Have I taken a stand today for what matters most to me or have I chosen to play it safe and not rock the boat?"

I hosted a seder and throughout the telling of the Exodus story we reflected on the places in our own lives where we were held back by our own internal oppressors: fear, self-doubt, and lack of confidence.

We talked about social plagues, like discrimination, and the importance of our commitment to creating a world where everyone is equal.

We even discussed the spiritual plague of feeling separate from our own connection to Spirit that the Egyptians squelched in the Jews enslaved in Egypt.

There are so many themes between what the Jews experienced and what LGBT people are experiencing today. Jews were not allowed to believe in their divine inheritance, something LGBT people are told all the time. We are not godly. We are not worthy. We are sinners, blah blah. In Jewish mysticism, God is both the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine combined, so how can LGBT people not be made in the image and likeness of God? In fact, I doubt very much that God is a solid 1 on the Kinsey Scale.

I met Daneen two years ago when she was just beginning to work on the documentary and I was on tour with my book, Love Warriors. I was inspired by her vision and advocacy. Last week, the couple traveled to Southern California and held screenings in Hollywood and Glendale. I was able to make a screening at the SDA Church in Glendale. The film was fantastic!

The Q&A afterwards was highly charged. A man stood up and quoted the bible and then personally damned one of the gay couple's to hell. Another person talked about a study that said that gay men are unable to be monogamous. Akers stated that the study was a study of people at high risk for HIV infection and excluded men in monogamous relationships, but continued to surface in church communities as a study that proved that gay men are not monogamous.

Nope, we still we live in a society where heterosexual married couples can take their relationship protections for granted, while same-sex couples face uncertainty. Yes, in several states now same-sex couples have marriage and same-sex couples can get some rights through alternative-to-marriage relationship status in a handful of other states, but then be denied those same rights in another locale.

Marriage means not having to wonder if you are still considered married when you leave Iowa to vacation in Virginia. If there is a medical emergency, wondering whether you'll be denied the right to be with your spouse at the hospital or the right to make medical decisions for them. It means not having to worry that if, God forbid, your loved one dies when you are on vacation, whether you will be denied the right to claim your spouse's body.

But because same-sex couples are denied access to marriage they do have to worry about being denied these rights. Take the real-life story of San Francisco couple Bill Flanigan and Robert Daniel who were traveling from San Francisco to Washington, DC for a family vacation when Robert became suddenly ill with complications from AIDS.

Davina: Why do you think Hawaii was the first state to get so much notoriety when there'd been marriage cases filed since the '70s?

Genora: Hawaii historically has been very out there politically. It was the first state to ratify the [Equal Rights Amendment] and the first state to have legal abortions. I think Hawaii was also one of the first states to offer equal protection at the workplace and I think that encouraged them (eventually the ACLU and Lambda) to really look at the culture of the Hawaiians. Homosexuality was part of their culture. It was not looked down upon. Homosexuality was more of a power. It was more sacred to the people of Hawaii, the real Hawaiians.

Hawaii is very open-minded and the people there pretty much do not really discriminate. They have an open mind and an open table for discussions and talking about things because so much has happened there, like with the military wars and with the culture. I think they were more accepting and more willing to understand that, so I think the arena was a better place to discuss it.

When the Hawaii Supreme Court came out with the decision in our favor, that really opened the door to discussions, and everybody thought legally that we were going to win because there was no way the state could prove otherwise. And so for once the U.S.government started to wonder, "Wow, Hawaii might win, so maybe we should develop a DOMA law."

So that's exactly what they did because they were in fear that we were going to win completely. And so it would have to be where everyone was saying that they would fly in from their home state, whether it was Massachusetts or wherever, and they would fly back to their state and sue for the right to get married because of this case.

I think it was a really big eye-opener for a lot of people. And people started to say to me, "What about gays in the military?" I'd say, "That's good too."

They'd say, "Well, why marriage now?" I would say, "Then when?" It was just an opportune time, I think - in that scale, of the calendar, in history - I think it was just everything was in the right combination and I think that's why it happened.

There were really not any kind of activities for people to get together until like the '90s, and that's when everybody, I guess, started more communities. They opened up the first women's center at the University of Hawaii, and I think from there everything was sort of up and up. And when this marriage project had come out, a lot more people got involved. There were more people than we imagined, and the people started to support us. I don't know where they all came from, but they all came out from the woodwork for some reason.

I followed her into the back room. There were shelves of white boxes with labels on the side. She took down a box and opened it.

"Look at these," she said and I gazed down at the black and white photos. They had to be at least 60 years old. The images of a gay wedding party from what looked like the 1940s or 1950s.

One photo was of the grooms dressed in suits exchanging vows with their best men by their sides, another photo was of the grooms sealing their nuptials with a kiss. They were beautiful photos that the newlyweds never got to see.

The photos had been donated to One Archives by an anonymous donor who as a young woman had worked for a photo developer. When he saw the photos he was outraged by this "indecency" and told her to destroy the negatives and the photos. She destroyed the negatives, but had held on to the photos hoping somehow to return them to the customers. She never found them, so she made the decision to donate them to ONE Archives, an LGBTQ archive in Los Angeles.

I've been donating items to ONE for their marriage equality collection (T-shirts from Californians for Same-Sex Marriage from 2001, flyers from the Marriage Equality California marriage license counter events from 2002, random notes and photos)and I wanted to learn more about ONE, so last week I toured the archives.

Civil rights movements are long and hard. In the LGBT equality movement, which includes the simple right to exist, to express our true selves and to love openly, we have had many casualties. Some of our fallen are remembered, like Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena, Tyler Clementi. Others we will never know.

Every civil rights fight exacts a toll on those who participate. We have been subject to hate speech, physical brutality, public scrutiny, shamed, denied the right to simply pursue happiness with the guarantees of our equal protection, etc. Yet, even still, there is always something redemptive in our personal sacrifices, in our refusal to let the status quo of discrimination remain.

Although we were standing the required number of feet away from where voting was happening, the person manning the polling place felt threatened by our gay presence and was going to call the police on us. It was the first time I thought I was going to be arrested for my marriage equality activism.

In that area most voters were anti-gay. One grey-haired old lady drove by and rolled down her window to make sure we knew she voted "yes on 8," and she was one of the kind ones.

I remember watching the election results later that night in a hotel in downtown San Francisco. The early numbers showed "No on 8" leading, and in between news reports, while votes from the various precincts were being tallied, various speakers from the "No on 8 Campaign" took to the stage and shared their stories about why marriage equality mattered to them.

Then we learned that Barack Obama was elected our 44th President, and all at once the room filled with joyous applause! The energy was invigorating, and tears fell from many eyes as we listened to our President-elect, who had just broken the racial barrier, speak about the new American Dream that he would usher in during his presidency, which included "LGBT Americans," or maybe he said "gay and lesbian Americans." I don't remember his words exactly, but it was the first time a U.S. President acknowledged us as part of the American family.

Within moments of our rejoicing the acknowledgement by our new president-elect however, an air of palpable sadness filled the room. More precincts had been tallied and the percentage of "No on 8" votes was now less than the" Yes on 8 votes" which now was ahead by four percent.

Outside the hotel people celebrated in the streets, while inside the "No on 8 Campaign" headquarters people began weeping. How could this be? We wondered. Only yesterday same-sex couples were joyfully marrying. Hadn't our fellow Californians seen the love in our eyes? Hadn't they finally seen our humanity? How could so many people want to deny us our happiness? How could a small percentage of voters take away our rights? It was unfathomable.

It was then that she realized she was a woman. That Halloween she ventured out in women's clothing. Rachel endured the gossip and teasing of her co-workers through the holidays and in the beginning of the new millennium, Jan 6, 2000, she had an official gender change and began living full time as a woman. That's when her life turned upside down.

Her employer, Southern California Edison, made her re-interview for her job. Since she was hired as a man, and was now living as a woman, her employer believed that she was no longer qualified to do the work she'd been doing as a man for 27 years. She was even targeted and protested by local Christians who perceived her as the anti-Christ during the Y2K scare, one person even "pissed" on her.

Ultimately, she was chased out of her job and went from living a middle-class lifestyle in the Los Angeles area to living in abject poverty in the outskirts of San Bernadino County surrounded by women struggling to survive through sex work. It was a radical shift and even through the crushing loss, and her feeling abandoned by God, Rachel's empathy grew as did her resolve to help others.

It was a huge deal to close my private therapy practice in Berkeley and release my coveted Mills College counseling position, let alone leave a community that I'd lived in for over twenty years and an irreplaceable tribe of friends!

Nevertheless, it was time for a change.

After getting divorced last year and all that disappears in your life when your marital status changes, it was time for something fresh. New territory has a sort of healing balm to it. Free of haunting memories, life is created anew.

At the same time, creating something new in the middle of your life can feel overwhelming, especially because rebuilding takes time and our egos are constantly reminding us of what was.

I've seen this pattern show up for a lot for people who have chosen to start over, as well as for people who were forced to start over when their companies downsized or contracts dried up. I've watched colleagues and clients alike, struggle with this. Somewhere along the way, we were taught that success is linear. We ascend the corporate or success ladder. Our models and metaphors only allow for three options: we are either up, down, or moving laterally.

Obviously, we've been indoctrinated to believe that "up" is the only acceptable option on the ladder and that if we aren't climbing the ladder, then our worth as human beings is lessened, similar to how stock is valued on the market. Our value is rising, staying the same, or becoming worthless.

Clearly it is time that this archaic, patriarchal, practice be tossed out like the torture chambers and thumbscrews of the Dark Ages. If we want to create a fair and equal world we must first stop defining our worth and our income and class status. This is radical social change.

It's the most beautiful land with the Pacific Ocean on one side and inland Redwood trees. Because it's on the coast it has a mild climate and in late Spring the countryside is lit up with flowering rhododendrons, red, purple, white, and pink. It's beautiful countryside. Today Mendocino County is known for its beautiful redwoods, it's cash crop-marijuana, and organic gardening. They were one of the few counties that sued Monsanto to keep GMOs off their land.

Photo: Review in Mendocino Coast Property Real Estate magazine featuring Laurie and Carmen. Carmen is the one holding the pitchfork.

More than 40 years ago, this small band of womyn became homesteaders, farmers and goat-herders. And I mean literally. They built their own homes and outhouses, rigged up their own plumbing, and figured out how to be self-sufficient and then even created a feminist magazine called Country Women that was distributed throughout the country to teach other womyn how to be self-sufficient. This incredible history is documented in a new film called "Women on the Land."

Carmen Goodyear, who is the co-creator of the film with her unlawfully wedded wife, Laurie York, was one of the first women settlers to this area and in her early twenties built a small cabin, Thoreau-Walden-Pond-style, that she lived in for about 35 years until a nearby redwood tree fell down and she decided to upgrade and get a kitchen and some indoor plumbing. A few years later she decided to get an indoor toilet. She is, after all, in her sixties now.

Yesterday a trial judge ordered the prop 8 case closed which means, what we really already knew, that same-sex couples in California won't have the same right to marry as opposite-sex couples do until the Supreme Court weighs in on the Prop 8 case or overturns DOMA. It's not like they're going to let us have our rights just like that. We still have more hurdles to leap than any of those toned Olympic athletes did in this year's games.

Ironically enough, the Catholic Archbishop who helped mastermind the Yes on Prop 8 campaign was arrested for drunk driving in San Diego on Saturday. Bishop Salvetore Coridileone helped to scare the wits out of straight parents by creating commercials that made parents believe that same-sex marriage was harmful to their children. I know several parents whose lives have been devastated when their children were killed by drunk drivers. However, I've yet to meet a parent, whose child died because of same-sex marriage.

Yeah, it's too bad that her partner isn't getting those benefits, just like it sucks that every other surviving same-sex partner and spouse is being denied 1,138 federal benefits. But unlike those other nameless couples, Sally Ride and her partner had a platform.

It's scarier to come out of the closet than it is to fly into space on a space shuttle!

The woman could fly into space, but she couldn't come out of the closet? She went out of our atmosphere in a rocket ship, but she couldn't advocate for LGBT equality in employment and relationship recognition? Seriously?

I mean, I didn't get my Ph.D. in psychology and attend life coach training, just to be an arm chair psychologist and marriage equality activist. I have visions, big ones, of being the metaphysical butch self-help guru. Ellen for entertainment, Suzie for your money, k.d. for music, and Davina for all your self-help needs. Yes, the queer Dr. Phil if you will!

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail or if it was worth it to go for it even if you did?

For Yari, it was moving from Florida to Los Angeles so she could pursue her dream of being a celebrity fitness trainer. For Dianna, it was leaving her small town in Austria to pursue her desire to be a Broadway actor.

Who would you be if you let go of the idea that you needed to please others?