David Knight, son of the state senator who was the author of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, defied his father’s law and wed his partner of 10 years Tuesday in a quiet ceremony attended by just two friends in San Francisco City Hall.
Atop the grand staircase of City Hall’s rotunda, Knight and Joe Lazzaro of Baltimore exchanged rings and were pronounced spouses for life one month after Sen. William “Pete” Knight, R-Palmdale, proclaimed San Francisco’s same- sex marriages “nothing more than a sideshow.”
Knight, a shy 42-year-old cabinetmaker and former Air Force fighter pilot, broke his long silence on his father’s politics in 2000 to denounce Prop. 22 and talk about the pain it caused his family. He had told his father about six years earlier that he is gay.