He was at the center of a Supreme Court case that changed gay marriage. Now, he's worried.
When Jim Obergefell was sitting in the gallery at the Supreme Court on June 26, 2015, he was waiting to hear his name. The justices were preparing to rule on Obergefell v. Hodges, a case that became a landmark in the progress toward LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. The case, which considered the rights of same-sex couples to marry, ultimately won favor with a majority of the justices, but for Obergefell, the moment wasn’t, and could never be, totally complete.
His husband, John Arthur, died years before the ruling was announced.
Now, 10 years on, he sat down with USA TODAY to reflect on how their love for each other helped shape the fight for marriage equality in the U.S., and what progress there is to still be made in the fight for equality.
Obergefell and Arthur met in 1992 and became engaged in 1993. That’s when their journey as marriage equality pioneers first began – and for Obergefell, continues into the present.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
View |38 Photos People honor LGBTQ+ Pride Month June 2024: Parades, resistance, more Pride Month celebrations – including parades, festivals, parties and picnics – are held throughout June. See how communities honor LGBTQ+ pride. Question: You got engaged with a traditional diamond ring, even though there was no formal option for marriage. What did that ring mean to you in 1993?
Answer: You know, that diamond ring signified you're the person I choose. You're the person I want to spend my life with, and we don't have the ability to do anything legal, but at least you know that's how I feel.
And from there, what was your journey to get married?
John and I just built a life together. We bought our first house. We built a great circle of friends and family in Cincinnati, people who saw us and treated us as a couple, as a committed couple.
It wasn't until 2011 that things really took an unexpected turn. John was diagnosed with ALS. Instead of seeing a few decades more together, we knew our time together was limited to two to five years or less. John progressed fairly rapidly, and by April of 2013 he started at home hospice care.
We could have put him in a facility, but we had to think about things that other couples didn't have to think about. How would he be treated as a gay man in a facility? How would I be treated as his partner of almost 21 years? We had nothing legal, no rights and we made the decision: Let's do at-home hospice care because that meant I could keep him safe and comfortable.
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