After 775K gay marriages, Americans are still fighting for rights 10 years later

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Ten years ago, Ohioan Jim Obergefell catapulted into the national spotlight as the guy who took gay marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court and won the right for millions of people like him and his husband.

A decade later Obergefell, who was born in Sandusky and lived in Cincinnati, is worried about a fierce backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, transgender Americans and marriage equality.

In 10 states, state legislators have attacked same sex marriage by introducing resolutions urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark ruling and introducing bills to create a special "covenant marriage" category for heterosexual marriages. And 32 states, including Ohio, have currently unenforceable same sex marriage bans in laws or constitutions. If the Obergefell ruling were overturned, those bans would likely go back into effect in those states.

More: Ohio's Jim Obergefell looks back decade after his Supreme Court case legalized gay marriage

"They don't believe we deserve the right to form families and to have a life where we can enjoy the same rights, the same protections, the same responsibilities as anyone else," Obergefell said. "So, 10 years on, I’m worried about marriage equality. I really am because there are people who refuse to let it lie. I just honestly don’t understand why. How has any queer marriage ever impacted a straight marriage? It hasn’t."

A love story, a fatal disease and a piece of paper

In July 2013, Obergefell married the love of his life, John Arthur, who was gravely ill with ALS. Because Ohio at the time didn’t allow same-sex unions, the couple flew from their home in Cincinnati to Maryland to exchange vows in a medical aircraft on an airport tarmac.

Days later, Cincinnati civil rights attorney Alphonse Gerhardstein met with the couple and brought a blank Ohio death certificate.

"Do you guys understand that when John dies, his last record as a person will be wrong here, where it says marital status at the time of death?" Gerhardstein told the couple. "Ohio will say John was unmarried. And Jim, your name will not be here, where it says surviving spouse name."

Brokenhearted and angry at the idea of not being recognized by their home state, Arthur and Obergefell told Gerhardstein, yes, they wanted to do something about it.

Days later they filed suit in U.S. District Court and Judge Timothy Black cleared his docket, held a hearing and made a ruling in favor of the newlyweds. "This is not a complicated case," Black wrote in the opening line of his decision.

Arthur died three months later in October 2013 at age 48.

Republican Mike DeWine, then Ohio attorney general, appealed the decision to the 6th District Court of Appeals, which ruled against Obergefell in November 2014.

Obergefell was among dozens of plaintiffs in multiple cases that appealed adverse decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gerhardstein filed the paperwork just ahead of other plaintiffs and that meant the case bore Obergefell's name.

On June 26, 2015, Obergefell sat in the courtroom when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy read aloud a summary of the 5-4 landmark ruling. It established that same sex couples had the right to marry under the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

"My first thought was, ‘John, I wish you were here. I wish you could experience this. I wish you could know that our marriage cannot be erased,’" Obergefell recalled. "What I wasn’t expecting to feel was this realization that for the first time in my life as an out gay man, I felt like an equal American."

Gay marriage: support and opposition

Nationwide, there were 774,553 same sex married couples in 2023, including 22,400 Ohio couples, the latest year for which the U.S. Census has data. That's up from 334,829 same sex married couples in 2014, the year before the ruling made gay marriage legal across the country.

Nearly seven in 10 Americans support same sex marriage, according to a June 2024 Gallup poll. Support is stronger among Democrats and independents and below 50% for Republicans.

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, married her wife, Jean, in 2015 just a few months after the Supreme Court ruling. The Obergefell decision brought relationships out of the closet and increased understanding of the LGBTQ+ community, she said.

"I think it just gives families a grounding in something very normalizing, something relatable and then in a way some stability," said Antonio, who joined the Ohio Legislature in 2011.

Despite the numbers of same sex marriages and public support, Antonio is certain that opponents will continue to try to unravel the civil right. The LGBTQ+ community has long been marginalized and demonized and the current backlash against DEI and transgender Americans is particularly fierce, she said.

"I don't think there is a safe corner of public policy in the United States right now," said Antonio, who is the only out gay lawmaker in Ohio. "I'd like to believe the Supreme Court members would owe their allegiance to the law and not to a demigod but I'm not 100% sure in this moment."

Even 10 years ago, Antonio said she wasn't certain the Obergefell decision would be totally locked in "because of the fact that people use our community as a pawn when they see fit and don't worry at all about any kind of retribution or consequence."

Gerhardstein doesn't think reversal of Obergefell is imminent, but it is possible. The Dobbs decision, which left abortion policy up to the states, undercut some of the legal theory supporting Obergefell, he said.

In Ohio, Republican lawmakers lack the political will to repeal a state law that bans gay marriage or take steps to remove a constitutional ban that voters approved in 2004. If the Supreme Court overturned the Obergefell precedent, Ohio's ban would go back into effect.

"So, the stakes are high," Gerhardstein said.

Kate Mozynski, legal director for Equality Ohio, agreed with Gerhardstein but added that the LGBTQ+ community and its allies need to fight the battle happening right now.

"There is a lot of anxiety in the world about what could happen to marriage equality but there are coordinated legislative attacks against the transgender community and transgender kids," Mozynski said. "It's very important that we come together as a community to support folks who are dealing with the blowback of this legislation right now, as opposed to only concentrating on what could potentially happen in the future."

State government reporter Laura Bischoff can be reached at lbischoff@gannett.com and @lbischoff on X.

Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the Paste BN Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.