HUDSON: The only thing that made Jim Obergefell discontent with his marriage certificate was his husband’s death certificate.
That was the gut punch: Staring at a blank copy of the document and being told that when ALS completed its two-year assault on the body of John Arthur, the line offering to record the surviving spouse’s name would remain blank by Ohio law.
And so Obergefell went from happy groom to determined plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex unions across the country.
Obergefell, who co-authored the newly-released book Love Wins with Debbie Cenziper, shared his personal journey with an appreciative crowd at Hudson Library and Historical Society Monday night, just six days from the first anniversary of the high court’s historic decision.
When Obergefell and Arthur married in 2013, Ohio law didn’t recognize that the couple had tied the knot in Maryland where gay marriage was legal.
It didn’t matter that friends and family had pooled $14,000 to hire a medical plane to take the Cincinnati couple to a Baltimore airport so they could exchange vows on the tarmac before heading back home.
It didn’t matter that a month earlier, the courts had ordered the United States government to recognize same-sex marriages for the purpose of federal benefits.
If Arthur stayed true to his pledge to never live outside of Cincinnati and took his final breath in Ohio — where a decade earlier voters marched to the polls to explicitly ban same-sex marriage — then his death certificate would record him as an unmarried man.
This was explained to Obergefell and Arthur just a week after they’d returned from Baltimore by a civil rights attorney who had been moved by a published story about their unique plane trip and asked to meet with them.
They thought their marriage was Mission Accomplished. It was not.
“It broke our hearts, but more importantly, it made us angry,” Obergefell said. “… That’s when we realized how truly horrible [the Ohio law] was.”
Obergefell and Arthur were both IT consultants who met and fell in love in 1992. “Love at third sight,” Obergefell quipped because there were no sparks the first two times they crossed paths.
Obergefell was the baby among six siblings in a Catholic family raised in Sandusky, recalling that when he came out to his dad at the age of 26, his father responded: “Jim, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
Arthur had the opposite experience coming out to his family in Cincinnati, a city that had been notoriously conservative. Obergefell thinks that played a role in their slow-paced courtship, but it was not a relationship he was willing to give up on.
“I saw a future” with Arthur, who Obergefell described as well-spoken, charming and witty. “I saw something worth fighting for.”
The exception in Arthur’s family was his Aunt Paulette Roberts, so supportive of the couple that “she went online and hit the ‘Ordain Me’ button” to become a minister so she’d be ready to marry them when they were ready, Obergefell said.
That, however, would take another seven years. The couple had no interest in paper vows with no legal weight, so it wasn’t until the United States agreed to recognize same-sex marriage for federal benefits that Obergefell was motivated to throw his arms around Arthur and say, “Let’s get married.”
By then, Arthur was already dying. In 2011 he’d been diagnosed with ALS, sometimes called Lou Gherig’s disease. Obergefell remembered the moment when he started worrying about Arthur’s gait seeming different, like a sprained ankle that wasn’t healing.
Arthur died in October of 2013, three months after his wedding.
Obergefel said Arthur was the outgoing one who could command a crowd and would no doubt have “laughed out loud” to see it was his husband in the front of a civil rights battle, sitting before the Supreme Court, writing a book and speaking to audiences.
There were actually 30 plaintiffs from four states in that historic case, but it carries the name Obergefell v. Hodges through a twist of fate. In merging several lawsuits into one, the Supreme Court automatically identifies the case by the name with the lowest docket number — and that just happened to be Obergefell’s Ohio lawsuit.
Obergefell said there have been many surprises since the court’s ruling.
He was surprised that Ohio didn’t fight back and — unlike neighboring Kentucky — courtrooms across the state easily accepted the changes.
He was surprised that Cincinnati, once known as the “city without pity” for it’s anti-gay culture, turned out to be supportive, with the city solicitor even announcing agreement with the Supreme Court justices.
He was surprised at many of the people who wanted to shake his hand. A Roman Catholic priest. A man who simply identified himself as an “evangelical Republican.”
Obergefel said the experience taught him that there’s a universal human experience, an emotion that helps many see beyond their prejudices when they stay still long enough to listen to another’s tale.
“Every person loves someone,” he said. “I think our story just connected on that level.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.