Unless one of the five conservatives now on the court surprises us, there is no longer a champion for queer people in the majority bloc.įor people who are not heterosexual and cisgender, that means we can expect to see a significant slowing, or even a reversal, of our progress toward equality. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who Kavanaugh replaced, was conservative but authored major decisions that advanced the rights of LGBTQ people, including Jim’s case. Supreme Court now has a more conservative majority. It distresses me that Jim’s arduous journey, and the equality he won for millions of people, might now be undermined by Kavanaugh, whose performance during the confirmation hearings revealed a person who seems to be, in many ways, Jim’s foil. Jim was in my thoughts during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings a few weeks ago, as Brett Kavanaugh frothed, displayed partisanship, and exhibited what more than 2,400 law professors described in an open letter published by The New York Times as “a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court.” Throughout the whole evening, he was friendly and thoughtful. Yet there he was, standing before a group of strangers who wanted to hear all of the details about his fight for equality. Jim sued and won but Ohio appealed, eventually pushing Jim’s case to the Supreme Court.Īs Jim spoke in the North Phoenix sanctuary, he was less than a month away from hearing whether the nation’s highest court considered his marriage equal under the law. After John died, Ohio refused to list Jim on the death certificate as John’s surviving spouse. They said “I do” in the aircraft as it sat on the tarmac. Because they could not marry in Ohio, where they lived, they had to fly on a medically equipped plane to Maryland, where their marriage was legal. Jim and his husband, John Arthur, were legally married in 2013, just months before John’s death of ALS.

Jim’s preceding years had been tragic and trying, and yet he was kindhearted and generous with his time. Constitution protects same-sex marriages.

Supreme Court would declare – because of a lawsuit bearing his name – the U.S. It was early June 2015, about two weeks before the U.S. This blog post originally appeared in the December 2018 issue of Ec ho Magazine as part of the magazine's 'We The People' column.Ī few years ago, Jim Obergefell spoke in Arizona, at Shadow Rock United Church of Christ.

Aclu nytimes today published letter