Interview highlights
On the story behind his original lawsuit
On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in their decision in The United States v. Windsor. I proposed to my partner John, and he was dying of ALS. We were in our 20th year together as a couple. We ended up marrying inside a medical jet in Maryland, and we lived in Ohio. When we learned that John's death certificate would be filled out incorrectly when he died, saying he was single, we decided to sue the state of Ohio and the city of Cincinnati to demand recognition of our lawful out-of-state marriage on John's death certificate at the time he died. That's the case that took me all the way to the Supreme Court.
On the link between the ruling on abortion and the future of same-sex marriage
My concern in this leaked decision, and why I'm worried about marriage equality is the language in this decision, which says "unenumerated rights." [These are] the rights that we enjoy as Americans that are not specifically written out word for word in the Constitution: the right to privacy, the right to marry. This leaked decision says, well, if those unenumerated rights will continue as what we consider fundamental rights, then they have to be based in our nation's history and tradition. That's a very dangerous thing, because marriage equality is only seven years old, not even seven years old. That is not a long history. It's certainly not the tradition of our nation. So, that language, talking about unenumerated rights being based in history and tradition, that concerns me.
