WorkingDaddy

Mike Kepka

The San Francisco Chronicle

Ed readies for his daily commute to San Francisco, where he works as a database architect for Wells Fargo. Each morning, he wakes his daughter and makes her breakfast before turning over child-care duties to Ed. When Kiki is having a difficult morning, he confesses sheepishly, sometimes I feel awfully happy to get out of the house.' STORY SUMMARY - - Daily Life in a Same-Sex Marriage Together for 18 years, Ed Valenzuela and Gary Walker live with their adopted daughter on a tree-lined street in family-filled Berkeley neighborhood. Last February, they joined the more than 4,000 same-sex couples who seized the chance to marry at San Francisco City Hall. The product of an activist mayor, the weddings were halted by state courts a month later, and eventually invalidated. But saying 'I Do' was an experience the couple still treasures. 'For me, it was about Kiki, as everything always is,' says Ed, a 45-year-old homemaker. 'So that she would have the experience of us getting married.... She knows that we have a certificate and she was there and she saw it and she knows what she was wearing. And whenever we put on suits she says, 'Oh, you look like you're getting married.''

Mike Kepka, "WorkingDaddy," in POYi Archive, Item #34936, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/34936 (accessed June 14, 2025).