“WHAT?!”
Williams went to check on his dad. Williams’ husband of a few hours, Justin Lewis, knew what the commotion was about. He decided not to join the conversation, as it were, but could hear Williams and his father yelling.
Williams’ dad was watching the 10 o’clock news. It was February 9. Same-sex marriage was now the law in Alabama, and the local TV station was running a feature on Williams’ and Lewis’ wedding earlier that day.
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” Williams recalled his father telling him.
Disgusting, a word one might use to describe child molesters or a dead opossum in the road, was being applied to a couple of seven years exchanging vows that they’d love and cherish each other forever.
Same-sex marriage, which is legal in 37 states and Washington D.C., is creeping into the South, where opposition is its staunchest. North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida have all accepted same-sex marriage in recent months. A county clerk in Austin, Texas, issued the state’s first license this week.
Jokes abound that the South is filled with zealots and hillbillies stuck in eras bygone, and while those barbs go too far, it’s true that Southern states hold religion and conservatism dear on myriad issues.
According to the Williams Institute, a UCLA think tank, in only seven states do a third of residents or fewer approve of same-sex marriage. They all lie below the Mason-Dixon line.
In Alabama, the approval rating is 32%, according to the Williams Institute and the Public Religion Research Institute. While that number places Alabama firmly at the bottom among U.S. states, it’s worth noting that fewer than nine years ago, only 19% of the state’s voters rejected a constitutional amendment defining marriage as “unique relationship between a man and a woman.”
Hasty and happy decision
On Tuesday, with a CNN reporter en route to Mobile to discuss their impending March marriage, Anna Lisa Carmichael and Meredith Miller became worried.
Two federal court decisions had cleared the path for same-sex marriages to begin eight days earlier, only for Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court to direct all probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to gay couples.
Many of the state’s probate judges — as many as 44 out of 67 at one point — heeded Moore’s order.
Not even a U.S. Supreme Court refusal to extend the stay on the unions would dissuade Moore. While many saw the high court’s decision as a harbinger of how it will vote on the issue later this year, Moore said he sees no writing on the wall. In fact, he said, Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse themselves because they’ve performed same-sex marriages.
Carmichael, 33, and Miller, 32, joined a federal lawsuit to instruct Mobile County’s probate judge to disregard Moore’s order. Three days later, the path was cleared again.
Though the pair had married in a ceremony that the state didn’t recognize in 2011, they envisioned their legal wedding would be a big deal — gowns, bridesmaids, catering, the works.
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“I had this necklace that my grandmother gave me. It was a St. Christopher necklace. I didn’t know what to get a guy,” he said.
A surprised and happy Lewis didn’t mind the improvisation.
“There’s not that tradition of you’re going to get proposed to,” he said. “Even the idea of marriage, I thought, ‘OK, we might go to Massachusetts one day (where same-sex marriage is legal).’ I never thought I’d be married in the state I live in, even Utah.”
A most momentous day
Williams and Lewis woke up early February 9. They’d had picked out their clothes two weeks prior.
It was raining, but nothing could dampen the day, not even Lee County Probate Judge Bill English telling them he was not issuing same-sex marriage licenses.
A man in line told English he supported him and said, “God has given us a set of laws to live by.”
Williams turned and asked the man if his coat was made of a blended fabric, and if so, wasn’t that a clear violation of the law God set out in Deuteronomy? A bailiff interrupted before what was sure to be a spirited exchange, Williams said.
The couple heard Montgomery County was issuing licenses, so they drove more than an hour to find a decidedly different atmosphere in the state capital. The road in front of the courthouse was blocked off, police wore rainbows on their lapels and same-sex marriage supporters cheered and handed out cupcakes and beaded bracelets as couples emerged with their licenses.
Williams and Lewis could’ve married there, but they wanted to get married in Lee County, where they live. It’s a sentiment echoed by Carmichael and Miller, who had previously considered traveling to a state that allowed same-sex marriage.
“It’s our home. It’s where we live. It’s where our friends are. It’s where we’ve built our life together,” Miller said.
Williams and Lewis headed back to Opelika. There was a small element of sticking it to English by getting married in front of the courthouse where they were denied their license, Williams said, but he and Lewis had also grown fond of the same-sex marriage supporters at the Lee County Courthouse.
A man named Glenn had told them the supporters showed up just for couples like them, who were getting married without friends and families present. A pagan minister, Angela Farmer, offered to marry them.
“They would’ve just been standing there with their good intentions. We wanted them to be a part of it,” Williams said. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
A week later, Williams said he didn’t feel much different. They’ve had a joint bank account for seven years. They’ve lived together for six-and-a-half years. He loves Lewis like he did shortly after they met.
“It’s good that the state recognizes it now,” he said. “The sheet of paper’s nice, but we didn’t need it to validate our love.”
