“It sunk in, and I burst into tears…,” James Obergefell said inside NKU’s student union Thursday morning, recounting when he first heard about the 2015 decision from the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right for all same-sex couples in the United States to marry.
“My first thought was, ‘John, I wish you were here. I wish you could experience this. I wish you could know our marriage cannot be erased,'” Obergefell continued. “And then, what I wasn’t expecting was to realize for the first time in my life, as an out gay, man, I felt like an equal American.”
Obergefell was the namesake plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which eventually concluded in a 5-4 decision that same-sex marriage throughout the country was guaranteed under the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which broadly enshrines equal protection under the law. The “John” in Obergefell’s comments referred to John Arthur, his late husband.
Obergefell delivered his remarks to a crowd of people, including a good number of students from Chase Law School, at a special symposium in NKU’s student union Thursday morning. The symposium focused on a variety of legal topics and spanned much of the day, but the panel about Obergefell v. Hodges was the headliner.
The panel featured not only Obergefell himself but also Richard Hodges, the former director of the Ohio Department of Health and respondent in the case, Obergefell’s counsel in the case, civil rights lawyer Al Gerhardstein and Tennesse-based law professor Regina Hill, who worked on one of the lower court cases that was eventually consolidated into Obergefell v. Hodges.
Southern district of Ohio Judge (and Chase graduate) Timothy Black, who first ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2013 before the case was escalated to the Supreme Court, gave a brief video talk, as well. Chase professor Jack Harrison moderated the panel.
Hill began the talk with a presentation laying out the history of both pro and anti-LGBTQ legal actions in the nation’s history: President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order that barred gay people from working in the federal government, the Bowers v. Hardwick Supreme Court case of 1986 (which effectively criminalized gay sex), Lawerence v. Texas (which overturned Bowers v. Hardwick in 2009), the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2011, all the way up to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Hill also discussed the history of LGBTQ activism throughout the nation’s history.
Black gave his video statement after Hill’s presentation, where he expressed a theme that came up repeatedly throughout the panel, especially as it related to judges and legislators arguing that gay rights ought to be subject to legislation or popular referenda.
“The Supreme Court, of course, has spoken repeatedly about the fact that fundamental rights are not subject to the whim of the electorate,” Black said. “That’s what the third branch is there for. You can’t single out an unpopular minority and take away their fundamental rights.”
Obergefell spoke about he and his husband’s life as Cincinnati residents (he currently lives in Sandusky, Ohio) prior to the court case. Before the Supreme Court’s decision, same-sex marriage was governed on a state-by-state basis.
“We weren’t activists,” Obergefell admitted, other than being generally involved with community life while being openly gay. That changed when his (not yet) husband was diagnosed with ALS and moved into hospice in 2013. That same year, the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, which had barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, even if they occurred in states where it was legal.
“I didn’t think about this right at first; we were just happy it happened,” Obergefell said. “And then I realized, oh, wait, we wanted marriage, and we wanted marriage in every way it meant because we wanted to be recognized by our government. And I realized, oh, wait, we could get married. At least, the federal government will recognize this.”
Same-sex marriage was not legal in Ohio, so Obergefell called upon his friends and family to charter a medical jet to Baltimore to get married. Thus, Obergefell and Arthur became husbands.
There was still a problem, though. Ohio’s same-sex marriage ban wouldn’t recognize their out-of-state marriage. That wasn’t just an abstract problem of political principle. It meant that when Arthur eventually died, he would be listed as unmarried on his death certificate, conceivably shutting out Obergefell from the rights conventionally afforded to spouses and effectively nullifying their marriage, as far as the law was concerned.
Gerhardstein and Obergefell first tried suing the Ohio governor and then the attorney general’s office to no avail. Looking for other avenues, they finally landed on the health department, as that was the department responsible for issuing death certificates. Hodges, a self-proclaimed lifelong conservative who had never heard of Obergefell, had only recently been appointed to his position as director of the department.
“The music stopped, and I was the only one that had a chair,” Hodges joked before turning to Obergefell. “Jim, you owe me because if it weren’t for me, you’d still be looking for somebody to sue.”
Hodges said he was torn because, as a public official, his job was to uphold the law, regardless of his personal feelings. And Ohio law was quite clear, even if the U.S. Constitution was, at best, “ambiguous.”
“I thought about quitting,” Hodges said. “I was just doing my job, but a lot of political crimes have been committed by people who claimed they were just doing their job in history.”
Plus, Hodges said, his work in public health frequently put him into contact with members of the LGBTQ community.
“We did a lot of work in the LGBTQ community because they face health disparities and outcomes that other populations don’t experience,” Hodges said.
Hodges and Gerhardstein said it was important not to let the case turn into a political circus. That was one reason Gerhardstein eventually decided to sue Hodges because, unlike a prominent politician, a bureaucrat like Hodges wouldn’t be incentivized to play into political maneuvering that might derail the case.
“If you sue the Department of Health, the head of the Department of Health, we’ll get to the merits,” Gerhardstein said. “And the only way to respond was to decide that you trusted your opponent, which I did, and so I sued [Hodges’] predecessor, and ultimately him. And it worked, because we got right to the merits.”
Although the panelists expressed some trepidation about today’s political climate, most were, in fact, optimistic. Obergefell espoused this optimism when asked what he would tell LGBTQ people living in Northern Kentucky.
“If you’re feeling alone, just know that there are millions of people – people in our community but also allies – who believe in our right to be part of ‘We, the people,'” Obergefell said. “There are also allies. You’ll find allies in the strangest of places. I mean, who would have thought that Hodges of Obergefell v. Hodges would have been our ally? So, there are allies everywhere. You don’t always know it. Find hope in the fact that as dark as things might feel today, I think back to when I came out in 1992, and even with everything happening today, it is still a better world for me as an out, gay man today in 2025 than it was when I came out in 1992.
“Things have changed. Things have gotten better, but the only way we can hold on to that and make sure that tomorrow is better for all marginalized communities is when we use our voice at the ballot box, when we refuse to be silent and when we share our stories because that’s how we change hearts and minds, and that’s how we create lasting, positive change.”