Did gay marriage exist while Ronald Reagan was governor of California?

Boi from Troy, citing the Sacramento Bee, says yes:

In May of [1972], a brief item appeared in The Sacramento Bee, saying that three lesbian couples would share in a "holy union" ceremony at the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church, which today has more than 300 churches worldwide.

What the story, and a follow-up, didn't say was that one of the couples wanted the union registered with the state, said then Rev. Joseph H. Gilbert, who has since retired.

So Gilbert went to the Sacramento County clerk's office and asked for a confidential marriage license, which can be issued only to couples who are living together as husband and wife at the time they apply. As Gilbert recalls, a man in the back "looked up and smiled at me and tore off three forms," instead of just one.

"That's when I knew he'd read the article. He knew what I was doing," said Gilbert, who filled it out accurately and returned it after the ceremony, no questions asked. He believes it was filed, though confidential licenses cannot be viewed by the public without a court order...

When the Rev. Freda Smith took over the Sacramento congregation in 1972, she took out confidential licenses for at least a dozen gay couples in the 1970s - again, without challenge...

The rhetoric then sounded pretty much like it does today. In declaring that marriage must be between a man and a woman only, Nestande was quoted as saying that that definition is "the essence of Western civilization."...

But Sacramento gay activist Jerry Sloan believes that revealing this page in California history could be politically potent. "I don't know why any of these couples haven't come forward already," he said. "If they have been married the last 30 years, California hasn't slid off into the ocean."

And, with more than 3,000 gay couples married in San Francisco - a number growing daily - Western civilization still appears intact.

The idea behind this is to provide a way for people who have been living together to be married without the embarrassment of admitting in public that they were not really married in the first place.

I guess that's a matter of interpretation.

The devil is always in the details.