In 1980, Dick Wagner was the first openly gay person to win a seat on the Dane County Board of Supervisors.
But when he took the oath of office that year, Wagner was keenly aware that the Constitution he was swearing to uphold didn’t give him the same rights that it bestowed to straight folks.
“One of the questions really nagging in the back of my mind was ‘Does this really apply to me?’” Wagner remembers. “Today the answer is ‘yes.’”
Wagner joined many in the Madison area in cheering the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision Friday, giving same-sex couples the right to marry.
Chris Krimmer, a family law attorney with Balisle & Roberson, calls the decision “monumental,” and compares it to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated education unconstitutional.
“[The court] has now said in no unclear terms that gays and lesbians and their relationships are equal in stature to heterosexual relationships,” he says.
He marvels that just a little over a decade ago, sodomy laws were still being enforced in many states. “You've gone from being an outcast in society 13 years ago to now being elevated to being allowed to marry.”
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled on June 6, 2014 that Wisconsin’s amendment banning gay marriage was unconstitutional, prompting a rush on the Dane County clerk’s office by couples eager to obtain the legal protections marriage gives. Her ruling was appealed but upheld last September by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which also overturned a ban in Indiana.
However, the U.S. Sixth Court of Appeals, overseeing Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, later upheld a ban on same-sex marriage, forcing the Supreme Court to resolve the conflict between the two appellate courts.
Thirty-six states had already granted the right for same-sex couples to marry covering about 70% of the country’s population. Megin McDonell, a spokesperson for Fair Wisconsin, says Friday’s decision was generally expected.
“Nobody wanted to get too hopeful, but the signs were all pointing toward this,” McDonell says. “Everyone is happy and excited and relieved, but I wouldn’t say I was surprised.
The court is affirming where America is at right now. A vast majority of people support the right [of all people] to marry.”
But Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who is all but certain to run for president, told the Associated Press that the Supreme Court ruling was a “grave mistake” and that he would continue to call for a Constitutional amendment that would allow states to determine who can marry.
Tamara Packard, a partner at Cullen Weston Pines & Bach who helped lead the fight for marriage equality in Wisconsin, says having federal recognition is significant.
Packard married her partner last year in Washington, D.C. But she says until today, that marriage wasn’t recognized everywhere.
“We’ve had marriage equality in Wisconsin for a little over a year. But if a same-sex couple married in Wisconsin travels to Michigan, they were considered legal strangers,” she says. “When I went to visit my family in Florida, I was not considered a married lady. Today I am.”
Those legal rights can be crucial if something happens to one of the partners — say an accident or an illness. “Those practical aspects become very important in times of crisis,” Packard says. “The legal stuff that goes with marriage is important to have as portable as possible.”
Krimmer expects some conservative states to rebel or try to work around the decision, perhaps passing “rights of conscience” laws that would enable public officials to refuse to marry same-sex couples if it violates their religious beliefs. “It's going to be so difficult and challenging for them to ignore a Supreme Court decision,” he says. “But it's not unprecedented — they did that with segregation.”
However, Packard notes that “This decision clearly says, ‘no foot dragging. You can’t screw around with this.’”
The Supreme Court decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan concurring. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Packard praised the language of Kennedy’s opinion. “What really strikes me about it is how beautiful and poetic and what a deep understanding Justice Kennedy expressed about the meaning of marriage to people in our society,” Packard says.
She refers to the ending of Kennedy’s decision in particular, which reads: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
“There are other bits that are just ‘whoa,’” Packard says. “You don’t read stuff like that in Supreme Court decisions, or any court decisions.”