SIX DAYS later, Al went for a bike ride.
He pedaled out of Cincinnati with his daughter, Jessica, on a tandem bicycle fixed with a sack of gear. They rode west, across a creek, along roads made of gravel, to a general store in Indiana that served fried-bologna sandwiches. They rode on to Illinois, where the wind along the side of the highway nearly knocked them to the ground, and near a town called Salem, hot pebbles from street tar whipped at their knees.
They reached St. Louis, sunburned and aching, and spent the day talking to civil rights leaders about the violence in nearby Ferguson and how, in Cincinnati, Al had worked with the city on reforms that brought fairness and accountability to policing. They left in driving rain, their faces freckled with mud, but thirty-eight miles of rolling countryside was ahead and then the banks of the Mississippi River, where they stopped, awestruck.
They rolled into Memphis and ate barbecue with the Tennessee marriage equality team. They crossed deeper into the South, where backyards had barbecue smokers and small towns no longer had downtowns, save for a Baptist church. They went to a Sunday service in a building made of white clapboard and watched the congregation of thirteen throw coins and cash into a collection bucket, raising $504 for the poor. They biked on, through rain that struck sideways, and when they couldn’t find anyplace to eat in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, a family of Indian, Bangladeshi, and African American descent invited them to a graduation party for a defensive tackle named BJ who was leaving for college.
They wound through the windy back roads of Port Allen, Louisiana, past chemical plants and levees, and when they got caught on a bridge they couldn’t cross on their two-person bike, a man in a pickup truck heaved it onto his trailer and shuttled Al and Jessica to the other side. Finally, with 1,360 miles behind them, a blog filled with accounts of their travels, and $27,000 raised from their charity ride, which they would donate to criminal justice reform, they met up with Mimi in New Orleans.
Al had always taken to the road to clear his head when a case settled or a trial ended, pedaling his steel-frame bike around Lake Erie, Wisconsin, Illinois, and once, just before he met Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, 1,500 miles from El Paso to San Francisco to see his grandson on his first birthday. After months of grueling legal work, the physical exertion was comforting, and when he arrived in New Orleans in late May, a month after oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Al felt balanced, serene. He had brought a radio splitter on the trip to replay the oral arguments for Jessica while they biked, but Al knew there was nothing more he could do except wait for a ruling.
Jim decided to fly to Washington as the possible decision drew closer. The Supreme Court had scheduled a series of “decision days” before its session ended in late June, but only the nine justices knew for sure which rulings would come down when. Though the court often saved its biggest decisions for the end of the term, Jim wanted to be at the courthouse for every decision day in the second half of June, just in case.
The first was on a Monday. He arrived at the Supreme Court just after the sun came up and glanced at the small, scattered crowd, which included a lone gray-haired woman stationed at the foot of the steps bearing a sign that read WARNING! GOD DRAWS A LINE ON GAY MARRIAGE. He took a spot in line at the front of the courthouse, wondering whether the justices would surprise everyone and announce a decision on this still morning, when Washington was waking up to another summer workweek.
He was given a bright-orange admissions ticket and directed through the doors on the far-left side of the building, down the Great Hall and into the courtroom. He rose when the clerk called the hearing to order. He sat after the nine Supreme Court justices were seated. He waited, breathing slowly, as each new decision was announced, one on an immigration case and another on a bankruptcy case. There was no ruling on same-sex marriage.
He returned on Thursday, passing the gray-haired woman with her sign, and then again the following Monday, this time carrying a picture of John in his breast pocket. A massive bank of television cameras had set up at the steps of the courthouse, but still no decision.
It seemed to Jim as if he had spent the better part of two years waiting, grief and indignation fueling a journey that would finally end here, inside the marbled halls of the Supreme Court. The tension mounted as each day ended without an answer, and he found himself whispering to John late into the night. Soon.
On Thursday, June 25, the crowds were back, clogging the sidewalks and weaving around police dogs and news crews. Someone brought red helium balloons that spelled LOVE, and tourists stopped to snap pictures. There were only three days left in the court’s session and decisions on seven cases were still to come, including a ruling on President Obama’s health care law and another on a housing discrimination case out of Texas. For the fourth time, Jim clutched his orange admissions ticket and walked through the doors on the left side of the building, down the Great Hall, and into the courtroom.
Outside at ten A.M., the crowd quieted, waiting on word from the journalists inside. Thirteen years earlier, two Washington lawyers had started a blog that tracked the happenings of the Supreme Court, and at 10:01 A.M., SCOTUSblog posted: “We have the first opinion.”
Television station interns who had been waiting in the court’s pressroom came running across the expanse of the plaza minutes later to deliver paper copies of the ruling to the journalists outside. This one was on the Texas housing discrimination case.
About 10:10 A.M., the interns raced across the plaza to deliver the second opinion, this one upholding the Affordable Care Act, a decisive win for the president. Another minute passed, then two. Again the crowd waited. But bloggers inside the courthouse announced that there would be no more opinions that day.
Jim walked outside a few minutes later. Five more decisions were left, spread out over Friday and the following Monday, the last day of the court’s term. Friday was a particularly significant day in the history of gay rights because two years earlier on June 26, the court had announced the Windsor decision.
The court had never been one to stand on sentiment, but in Cincinnati, Adam Gerhardstein urged his father to catch the next flight to Washington. Al ran home to pack a bag, tossing in his favorite blue tie, given to him by his late father-in-law, the judge. Al would wear it to the Supreme Court. That night, Al flew to Washington, two days earlier than planned, just in case.
It was still dark outside on Friday morning when Jim fastened an American flag pin to his lapel and straightened his lavender-and-white bow tie. He was tense and his mind was racing, thinking about the days spent waiting and the ruling that could come within hours. He pulled his key chain from the dresser and stashed it in his pocket. It was a gold cube with good-luck symbols on all sides, a gift from a friend who had brought it home from Ireland, and Jim had taken to carrying it with him to the Supreme Court. Finally, he slipped on his wedding ring, with John’s ashes encased inside.
Outside there was a cool breeze, a welcome change to the muggy heat that had gripped Washington for days. For the fifth time that month, Jim rode across town to the Supreme Court, where a line of people hoping to get inside once again stood in a line that spanned the length of the street and round the corner. Jim found Al in front of the court building and the two men embraced as supporters waved signs: AMERICA IS READY.
“I’m nervous,” Al told Jim.
“That sounds familiar,” Jim said, smiling.
“Today may be the day.”
Jim paused. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Pam and Nicole Yorksmith hopped out of a car with their double stroller, and it felt like something of a reunion to Jim as he watched Al bend down to say hello to four-year-old Grayden, who was sporting a bow tie.
“How are you feeling?” Nicole Yorksmith asked Jim as Grayden darted up the steps to explore the fountain on the plaza.
“Nervous as hell.”
Greg Bourke, Michael De Leon, Bella, and Isaiah had come from Kentucky, and they stood in line behind the Yorksmiths. Jim was hoping to see Joe Vitale and Rob Talmas, but they were home in New York, waiting in the greenroom of MSNBC Studios for a morning interview. The two fathers had started building a legacy box for Cooper, filled with newspaper clips and pictures of the Supreme Court.
Jim was first in line again, and this time, the admissions tickets for the general public were lavender, a color often used in connection with the gay community. Maybe it’s a sign, John. Jim led the line inside the building, down the Great Hall, through security, and into the courtroom. He sat in the center section, and when he leaned forward, he could see Al up front, along with Mary Bonauto, Doug Hallward-Driemeier, James Esseks, and Susan Sommer. What would have happened, Jim thought, if Al had decided the case wasn’t winnable?
At 9:55 A.M., a buzzer sounded, a five-minute warning that court was about to begin. The room was utterly still. Jim breathed deeply and waited. The day before, SCOTUSblog had logged 1.1 million hits. Editor Amy Howe, writing about the case, called it “One of the biggest decisions in recent history.”
A second buzzer sounded, and the nine justices filed in. Jim expected to hear the name of another case, just as he had during each of his four prior visits, but this time he heard his own, along with the case number he had memorized, and the words were nothing less than stunning. For a split second, it seemed the only thing he could hear was his heart pounding as Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Justice Kennedy has our opinion this morning in Case 14-556, Obergefell v. Hodges and the consolidated cases.”
Three seats away from Jim, Nicole Yorksmith squeezed her wife’s hand. Bourke and De Leon inched closer to their children.
Justice Kennedy’s voice was soft, thoughtful. “Since the dawn of history, marriage has transformed strangers into relatives. This binds families and societies together, and it must be acknowledged that the opposite-sex character of marriage, one man, one woman, has long been viewed as essential to its very nature and purpose. And the Court’s analysis and the opinion today begins with these millennia of human experience, but it does not end there. For the history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. . . .”
Pam Yorksmith was nodding.
“Until recent decades, few persons had even thought about or considered the concept of same-sex marriage. In part, that is because homosexuality was condemned and criminalized by many states through the mid-twentieth century. It was deemed an illness by most experts. Of necessity, truthful declaration by same-sex couples of what was in their hearts had to remain unspoken . . .”
“Although the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, its inconsistency with the right to marry is now manifest. It would diminish the personhood of same-sex couples to deny them this liberty. . . .”
“. . . The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all states. No longer may this liberty be denied to them.”
Jim was so moved that he sobbed quietly. Pam Yorksmith held her hand over her mouth. Isaiah looked to his fathers and mouthed, “We won?” Michael De Leon nodded emphatically. Before the hearing began, Al had described the defeat in the Issue 3 case to a White House lawyer sitting next to him. Now, his face wet, Al passed a note to the lawyer. “I guess I’ll get over it now.” All around him, seasoned Supreme Court lawyers and advocates cried quietly. Susan Sommer felt light-headed and realized that she had been holding her breath.
“No union is more profound than marriage,” Justice Kennedy went on, “for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than they once were, and it would misunderstand petitioners to say that they disrespect or diminish the idea of marriage in these cases. They are pleased that they do respect it, but they respect it so deeply they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law and the Constitution grants them that right.”
In Tennessee that morning, Val Tanco had woken up with tingling hands and decided it was a sign that something significant was about to happen. Later, Tanco, Jesty, Lambert, and fifteen-month-old Emi huddled together outside the echocardiogram office at the University of Tennessee’s vet school, scanning Lambert’s iPad for news of a decision.
At 10:01 A.M., SCOTUSblog posted: Marriage.
Lambert shouted, “Marriage!”
The blog posted: Kennedy has the decision.
Lambert shouted, “Kennedy!”
They knew they had won. Lambert’s hands started shaking, but all through that day, through celebrations and press conferences, she would maintain her composure. Only later would she remember the nights she had spent as a young girl, begging God not to make her gay. In Justice Kennedy’s decision, Regina Lambert found dignity.
In New York, Joe Vitale and Rob Talmas were still in the greenroom of MSNBC when a production assistant barreled in and said, “Marriage ruling in—you won—need you two in the studio now.” At home, Cooper’s uncle shouted, “Daddies won!” Cooper, who was watching cartoons, threw his arms in the air.
In Kentucky, lawyers Shannon Fauver and Dawn Elliott, who had never filed a civil rights lawsuit and had now won a case that changed the law of the land, popped champagne and then raced to the courthouse to watch couples exchange vows.
In Michigan, lawyer Carole Stanyar danced and cheered with her legal team and plaintiffs until midnight in a packed Ann Arbor courtyard, where couples married under a makeshift archway.
In Cincinnati, Judge Black was celebrating his wedding anniversary. He posted on Instagram: “Marnie and I married 39 years ago today. And today, as we celebrate our love, we welcome all to join us in the glory of marriage.”
In Al Gerhardstein’s law office, Jennifer Branch, Adam Gerhardstein, the rest of the legal team, and several clients ate wedding cake. Scott Knox stopped by to celebrate and then went over to the courthouse to watch couples get married. A week earlier, Knox had contacted the probate judge to make sure the staff at the courthouse was prepared to issue marriage licenses. In a town once considered among the most antigay in the country, Republican judge Ralph Winkler asked Knox, “Can you get me a list of same-sex couples that want to get married, along with ministers and judges, so that I can give it out to my staff? This will be the biggest day in their lives, and I don’t want my staff just doing their jobs. I want them happy and enthusiastic about it.”
In rural Ohio, John’s aunt Paulette was driving into town with her grandson. Her cell phone rang. “I just want to hug you,” said Mike Thomas, a friend who had directed Paulette in a community theater production of Steel Magnolias the month that John had died.
“Did something happen with the Supreme Court?” she asked.
“There was a decision.”
“Which way did it go?” Paulette gripped the steering wheel.
“Our way.”
Later, she told Jim, “This is the ultimate legacy you could have given to John.”
At the headquarters of Freedom to Marry in New York, Evan Wolfson, who had first called for marriage equality in his 1983 thesis at Harvard Law School, whispered, “Oh my God. We won,” when his Twitter feed broke the news. “That only took thirty-two years.”
Inside the Supreme Court, Al and Jim could hear the cheering, chanting crowd even through the courthouse’s bronze doors, seventeen feet high and nine feet wide. The frenzied celebration would be captured by newspapers and television stations worldwide.
Later, Al would call Mimi and the mayor of Cincinnati, who would marry five gay couples that evening on Fountain Square. Jim would take a call from the president of the United States. In courthouses across the country, same-sex couples would exchange wedding vows, and in Washington, the White House would be lit in rainbow colors.
But for a minute or two, in a dark corner of the Great Hall, there was only Jim and Al. “This is amazing,” Al said softly, putting a hand on Jim’s shoulder, “just amazing.”
Jim was nodding, trying to collect his thoughts, grateful to Al, missing John. Baby, can you believe this? Then they were pushed toward the side doors of the courthouse, the same way they had come in an hour earlier, when the world looked entirely different, and a moment later, Jim and Al stepped together into the blazing summer sun.