SAN FRANCISCO—For the last 13 years, Lindasusan Ulrich has been in a committed relationship with the same woman. The couple have married three times, twice before it was legal in California and once while it briefly was. But if acquaintances were to assume Ulrich and her wife, Emily Drennen, are lesbians, they would be wrong. They identify as bisexuals and are proud of it. This doesn't mean their sexual orientation hasn't presented challenges. Even in a do-as-you-like city such as San Francisco, the women have found bisexuals to be a misunderstood and often overlooked minority. During the state's 2008 campaign to ban same-sex marriages, they forcefully reminded gay rights leaders—in the form of a cake decorated with the words "Having Our Cake and Eating It Too! Bisexuals Exist!"—that political advertising and fundraising appeals referring only to gay and lesbian couples did not encompass their imperiled union.
"It's a unique identity as opposed to half one and half the other," said Ulrich, a 41-year-old writer and musician who recently authored a report on "bisexual invisibility" for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.
The commission unanimously adopted the report, and that could prove a significant step, said Denise Penn, director of the American Institute of Bisexuality.
Because San Francisco takes its commitment to gay and lesbian rights so seriously, shining a spotlight on the hostility bisexuals sometimes encounter