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Michigan begins same-sex marriage ceremonies Hundreds of same-sex couples wed in Michigan before appeals court issues stay
(about 2 hours later)
Hundreds of gay couples in Michigan hurried to courthouses to recite marriage vows on Saturday, a day after a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriages, rushing to make their unions legal before a higher court stayed the decision. Hundreds of gay couples in Michigan rushed to local courthouses to recite marriage vows on Saturday, a day after a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriages.
Four county clerks, all elected Democrats who support same-sex marriage, took the unusual step of adding last-minute Saturday hours once the judge’s ruling was issued at 5 p.m. Friday. Within hours, however, the euphoria was tempered when a federal appeals court issued an order putting the Friday ruling on hold, “to allow a more reasoned consideration” of an emergency stay request filed by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (R).
State Attorney General Bill Schuette (R) immediately appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and asked for a stay. Late Saturday afternoon the appeals court suspended same-sex marriages in Michigan until at least Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. The state, in its filing, cited the “monumental impact the district court’s order would have on the institution of marriage.” A brief order from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said attorneys for the plaintiffs, a lesbian couple from suburban Detroit, have until Tuesday to submit their arguments as to why marriages should be allowed to continue.
The clerks scrambled to reach their staffs to come Saturday to provide security, help with paperwork and issue marriage licenses. It suspended same-sex marriages until at least Wednesday.
Couples began lining up outside the courthouses hours before they opened at 8 and 9 a.m. With their children, friends and family members, they cheered and embraced, knowing their window of victory could be short-lived. The Saturday court order capped a dramatic day in county offices across Michigan, with couples hurrying to wed in anticipation of a possible stay.
The appeals court had told lawyers for the winning side they needed to respond by noon Tuesday, leaving what some hoped would be at least a day and half before the ceremonies could be halted. But the court issued the stay on Saturday afternoon. Four county clerks, all elected Democrats and gay-marriage supporters, had taken the unusual step of adding last-minute Saturday hours.
The clerks said the looming threat of a stay convinced them to open Saturday. In the aftermath of the Friday ruling by District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman of Detroit that the state’s ban was unconstitutional, the clerks seized their chance to allow as many couples as possible to marry in a half-day. Friedman, unlike other judges who have issued similar rulings in other states, did not stay his decision.
“There was an opportunity today when marriage for same-sex couples is legal,” said Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, who announced on Twitter Friday night that she’d authorized the state’s first legal marriage ceremony and would open her office Saturday to conduct weddings. The clerks scrambled to reach their staffs to come into work on overtime to provide security, help with paperwork and issue marriage licenses.
“I couldn’t bring myself to force these couples who have waited so long to marry to wait until Monday morning” Byrum said. “There was an opportunity [Saturday] when marriage for same-sex couples was legal,” said Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, who announced on Twitter on Friday night that she’d authorized the state’s first legal marriage ceremony and would open her office until 1 p.m. Saturday to conduct weddings.
“It’s been an awesome morning!” she said, then interrupted a phone interview to greet couples as they entered the historic courthouse. “Welcome to the county! Come on in!” “I couldn’t bring myself to force these couples who have waited so long to marry to wait until Monday morning,” Byrum, whose county is home to the state capital, Lansing, said in an interview. “It’s been an awesome morning!”
Byrum presided over 20 ceremonies, about half the number of licenses her staff issued Saturday. Couples began lining up outside the courthouses hours before they opened at 8 or 9 a.m. With their children, friends and family members, they cheered and embraced, knowing their window of victory could be short-lived.
Byrum said she started text messaging her staff — most of whom had already left for the weekend — at 5:09 p.m. Friday, just minutes after U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman’s ruling came down. “Can I interest you in coming in to work” she asked. Five people responded immediately. By the time Byrum closed her office, she had issued 57 marriage licenses and performed 30 ceremonies.
Among the couples she married were Ann Watson and Susan Sherman, both 55, of East Lansing, who arrived at the courthouse at 10:45 a.m. with their 16-year-old daughter, Sarah.
The couple will have been together 24 years in June. When they got wind of Friday’s ruling, they assumed they would come to the courthouse first thing Monday. Then Sherman saw a tweet on her phone: Weddings would start Saturday. “I woke up the family and said, ‘Let’s do it!’ ” she said.
It was not how they had envisioned their wedding — rushed, with just one close friend at their side instead of many they had hoped would be there. They are now in legal limbo. Their marriage is not recognized in Michigan for now, but they are entitled to federal benefits because of a Supreme Court ruling last year that struck down parts of the Defense of Marriage Act.
In Utah, about 1,300 gay couples married in December during a brief legal window before the Supreme Court stayed a federal judge’s ruling that had overturned the same-sex-marriage ban there. Utah then decided not to recognize their marriages or offer any new benefits while the ruling is appealed.
Before Friday’s ruling, same-sex marriages were legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia.
In Oakland County, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, the clerk’s office issued 142 licenses and married 82 same-sex couples on Saturday, some en masse in the county commissioners’ auditorium.
“This this about making the service available to anyone who wanted it,” County Clerk Lisa Brown said before the appeals court halted the marriages.
Twelve people on her staff came to work on overtime. “With the amount of weddings I officiated, it was a windfall for Oakland County,” Brown joked. “It’s been a beautiful, beautiful day.”
In 2004, Michigan voters approved a referendum measure that made it unconstitutional for the state to recognize or perform same-sex marriages or civil unions.
The case decided Friday was brought by April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, nurses who live in a Detroit suburb. Each adopted children born with special needs, and they are raising them as one family. They originally sued in 2012 to overturn a state law that prevents them, as unmarried parties, from adopting their three children as a couple.
They later expanded their lawsuit to challenge the same-sex-marriage ban. But on Saturday, they were not among the couples making their unions legal.
“They want to get married when all the appeals have been exhausted, when they know their marriage can’t be disrupted, overturned or invalidated,” said their attorney, Dana Nessel.
In his ruling, Friedman dismissed the state’s contention, after a two-week trial, that Michigan voters adopted the ban on the premise that heterosexual married couples provided the optimal environment for raising children.In his ruling, Friedman dismissed the state’s contention, after a two-week trial, that Michigan voters adopted the ban on the premise that heterosexual married couples provided the optimal environment for raising children.
There is no proof that such a premise is true, Friedman wrote, and he declared the testimony of the state’s main witness “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.” Robert Barnes contributed to this report.
Unlike most of the judges who recently struck down bans in other states, Friedman did not stay his decision. That set off a rush to marriage like that in Utah, where a judge struck down that state’s ban. More than 1,000 marriages were performed before the Supreme Court issued a stay in that case.
Schuette, the state attorney general, said he was confident the appeals court would follow the Supreme Court’s lead. But the question was whether it would act before the marriages could begin.
“In 2004 the citizens of Michigan recognized that diversity in parenting is best for kids and families because moms and dads are not interchangeable,” Schuette said in a statement. “Michigan voters enshrined that decision in our state constitution, and their will should stand and be respected. I will continue to carry out my duty to protect and defend the constitution.”
Friedman, 70, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and took senior status in 2009, said the state’s defense of the law was misguided. “In attempting to define this case as a challenge to ‘the will of the people,’ state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people.”
Like other federal judges in Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah who have struck state bans, Friedman relied on two Supreme Court precedents: Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated state bans on interracial marriage in 1969, and last June’s U.S. v. Windsor, which overturned part of the Defense of Marriage Act withholding federal benefits from same-sex couples married in states where such unions are legal.
Unlike those judges, Friedman conducted a trial. In his 31-page decision, he said he gave great weight to studies presented by lawyers for the plaintiffs, lesbian couple April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who have been together for eight years and have three children, whom they cannot jointly adopt.
Those studies, Friedman said, showed there was no discernible difference in parenting competence between gay couples and heterosexual ones.
By contrast, Friedman was scornful of a state witness, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus. Friedman said Regnerus’s study — which suggested children of those in same-sex relationships fared poorly — was shoddy and intended to please the anti-gay activists who had funded it.
“The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and Regnerus obliged,” Friedman wrote.
Friedman’s decision continued an unbroken string of success in the federal courts for same-sex marriage activists, following the Windsor decision. The rulings, which include three that require recognition of such unions conducted in the 17 states and District of Columbia where they are legal, are now on appeal.