WHEN DUSK came on decision day, a rainbow streaked the sky above Cincinnati. Al Gerhardstein saw it just as his flight from Washington, D.C., touched down in Ohio, and he smiled all the way to a local restaurant, where he embraced his son, raised a glass, and toasted, “To love.”
The next day, Cincinnati threw its annual gay pride parade, coincidentally scheduled for June 27. When Issue 3 became law, Al was so furious with Cincinnati that he considered leaving town. But now the town wanted to welcome him home. All along the sidewalks of the city’s business district, supporters cheered and kissed and cried, waving to Al, Jim, and Paulette Roberts as they moved along the parade route in a 1962 Lincoln convertible driven by funeral home director Robert Grunn. Pam and Nicole Yorksmith walked alongside the car with a rainbow flag and Orion in a T-shirt that declared SCOTUS BABY.
The win at the Supreme Court was the sweetest victory in Al’s legal career. He had based his life’s work on the Constitution and the Constitution had done its job, protecting people like John Arthur, who wanted only to die a married man. Al was profoundly grateful. Soon he would head back to his law office, where new cases were already piled up. He would represent a transgender inmate brutally beaten by a cellmate, and later an African American father of twelve who was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop. The university would pay millions to settle with the family, establish a memorial and launch police reforms.
But as the black convertible rolled past Fountain Square, where five same-sex couples had married the night before, Al decided that he would give himself the day to celebrate with his city.
Jim left Cincinnati after the parade and crisscrossed the country over the next several months. He went to the gay pride parade in San Francisco. He met with Edie Windsor in New York. He sat with Michelle Obama in Washington, D.C., during the president’s final State of the Union address. He flew to Florida, where he looked out at the faces in a crowd from a group called Equality Florida and mused about his new life, how he had found purpose and passion in loss. “I’m still getting used to what happened on June 26 and my place in it. People call me a hero, a pioneer, a courageous man. I don’t think of myself that way. I simply think of myself as someone who was lucky enough to fall in love and keep my promises to the man I loved. I’m also someone who finally found his voice.”
He had no idea where his life was heading, but he knew he was drawn to new frontiers in the gay rights movement now that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right in all fifty states. He posted messages on Facebook and Twitter about the need for a federal anti-discrimination law protecting sexual orientation and gender identity, expanded support for transgender and nonconforming people, and lawsuits and lobbying against broad religious exemptions, much like the one raised by the county clerk in Kentucky who had refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even after the Supreme Court said she had to. Jim thought of himself as something of an accidental activist, a role he could never have imagined two years earlier, when he was a private man facing a brutal disease and the loss of a man he had loved for nearly twenty-one years.
Once, two months after the Supreme Court decision, Jim returned home to Cincinnati to help with a wedding. Kevin Cox had fallen in love with Tom Young two decades years earlier over long walks in a Cincinnati park that had once been home to a grand nineteenth-century estate. They wore rings but had never married because Ohio wouldn’t let them, and a ceremony in any other state seemed pointless.
Cox, who has clipped gray hair and a solid build, had been home from his job as the lead designer at the city’s weekly business journal on the day of the Supreme Court decision, and when Young came in late that afternoon after a day of nursing at a Cincinnati hospital, Young said, “Did you see the news?”
“Of course,” Cox replied. “They’re having a rally at Fountain Square and they’re going to perform marriages. Unfortunately, we had to get a license ahead of time.”
“Well,” Young said, smiling, “what have you been doing all day?”
They had never met Jim Obergefell, but Cox sent him a message on Facebook two days later: Now that we can legally marry, we’d like to take the plunge. We’d be very honored if you would consider officiating for us.
Jim had received his minister’s credentials a month before the Supreme Court ruling but had never performed a wedding. In late August, Cox, Young, Jim, and a handful of family and friends gathered under a pavilion with eight white columns and a domed roof, called the Temple of Love, in the same park where Cox and Young had spent hours walking with their dogs in the early 1990s. Cox wore a pink tie; Young wore purple. A cellist played the hymn “Simple Gifts.” They brought their dogs, Grace and Sofie, and a wedding cake made of white chocolate.
Jim stood before them. “For many years to come, you will remember this day, yet beyond the flowers, beyond the music, beyond the expressions of joy and encouragement, may you celebrate through the years that which is most fundamental about your union. You are joining because you love each other, you respect one another and you will honor each other, and because you are committed to sharing equally in both the triumphs and trials of the days to come. As you begin this new chapter in your lives, remember: all of your yesterdays have led you to today, and your love will lead you into tomorrow.”
Jim looked at Cox. “Take this ring and place it on Tom’s finger.”
Jim looked at Young. “Take this ring and place it on Kevin’s finger.”
Cox had worn his ring for the better part of twenty-one years, taking it off for the first time only a few days before the ceremony. Young had trouble pushing it back on, and Jim threw his head back and laughed.
Then he said, “You have chosen each other, declared your love and purpose before family and friends, and have made your pledge of love to each other, symbolized by the giving and receiving of rings. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of Ohio, I pronounce you legally wed.”