Supreme Court Set to Take on Same-sex Marriage Case
WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) — The U.S.Supreme Court is set to take on the issue of gay marriage on Tuesday, by deciding if states have the right to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The justices will hear the arguments of same-sex marriage advocates Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, Mary Bonauto and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
John Bursch and Joseph Whale, who will advocate that states should ban gay marriage, will also address the court.
More than 40 lawyers worked for same-sex couples from Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee in cases that have been consolidated from six cases to one, to be taken for the Supreme Court’s consideration.
“Whenever you have multiple parties who have to come together and select one person to do the argument, it becomes a tricky situation,” Pratik Shah, a former assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, told The Washington Post. “My guess is it was a negotiation process and a decision they came to, probably not easily.”
The consolidated case, “Obergefell v. Hodges,” centers around forty-eight-year-old Jim Obergefell from Cincinnati, Ohio. Obergefell and his boyfriend John Arthur began dating in 1993.
“Marriage would come up over time, but we always wanted it to be more than symbolic,” Obergefell told NBC News. “We wanted it to carry weight.”
Arthur was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig‘s Disease, in 2011 — two years before the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage in states that allowed it.
Obergefell and Arthur married on the tarmac of a Baltimore, Md., airport because Ohio does not recognize same-sex marriage. The couple filed a lawsuit to have their marriage formally recognized on Arthur’s death certificate. A federal judge ruled in favor of Obergefell and Arthur, but Ohio appealed and won, which took the case to the Supreme Court.
“I’m hopeful that the ruling will come out in our favor,” Obergefell told NBC News. “It’s certainly overwhelming to think that our story, our desire to marry and to be recognized will be heard in the Supreme Court.”
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