Accidental activists to make history
U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage began with near miss on highway
WASHINGTON— Three-hundred and twenty-three gay couples are married in Michigan because a trucker almost killed April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse.
They were driving home from Ohio one night in 2011. The truck veered into their lane. Just before impact, the man behind the wheel manoeuvred safely into a field. DeBoer and Rowse shook. When the trembling stopped, they had the conversation that sent them down an accidental path to history.
Baseball fans now applaud them in the stands. Old ladies thank them at the grocery store. On Tuesday, the unassuming hospital nurses from the Detroit suburbs will walk up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court as plaintiffs in the case that will probably make same-sex marriage legal throughout America forever.
The conversation in the minivan wasn’t even about marriage. It was about the three kids in the back seat.
“People always say we’re ‘she-roes,’ or ‘you’re pioneers,’ or ‘you’re trailblazers,’ ” Rowse said in an interview Sunday in Washington. “Our feeling is that we’re just parents who are looking out for the best interests of their kids.”
Their kids. The problem, they realized that night, was that the state of Michigan didn’t see Nolan, Jacob and Ryanne as theirs. Nolan and Jacob were legally adopted by Rowse. Ryanne was legally adopted by DeBoer. If something happened to either DeBoer or Rowse — if, for example, they got run over by a truck — the other mom would have no legal right to keep the family intact.
Their lawyer, Dana Nessel, said even a written expression of their wishes would not help. Michigan did not allow “second-parent adoption” for unmarried couples. No matter what they put on paper, a judge could assign their kids to anyone.
Nessel proposed filing a constitutional challenge to the adoption law.
“April and Jayne, I thought, were the perfect people to do it with,” Nessel said. “They’re great people, they’re great parents, they love each other, they love their kids. And they said from the very beginning they would do anything they had to do to protect their children.”
DeBoer, 44, and Rowse, 50, were both working midnight shifts. Their kids were all born with special needs. Neither had ever fought for gay rights.
Their 2012 lawsuit attracted only modest attention until a surprise courtroom twist. Judge Bernard Friedman, an appointee of Repub- lican president Ronald Reagan, mused that the real problem wasn’t the law that prohibited unmarried people from adopting together — it was the law that prohibited same-sex couples from being married people.
He suggested they change their lawsuit. Instead of challenging the adoption ban, he said, they should challenge the marriage ban.
Sitting affectionately on a hotel couch on Sunday, dressed in jeans and T-shirts for a day in the media spotlight, DeBoer and Rowse re-enacted their courtroom reaction. Rowse: “You see us go — ” DeBoer: “What? What?” Rowse: “What did he just say?” They modified the case as requested. Friedman struck down the ban last March. In November, an appeals court overturned Friedman’s decision and three similar decisions from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a final ruling by June.
Regardless of the outcome, DeBoer and Rowse have already won a meaningful victory. The 323 couples managed to scramble to get married in the one day between Friedman’s decision and a court-ordered halt. Among the grooms were Frank Colasonti Jr. and James Ryder, together 27 years. Since Friday night, they have camped outside the Supreme Court, waiting in line for a seat in the courtroom, waiting for another chance to cheer on DeBoer and Rowse. They have attended every hearing in the case. “They’re heroines for us,” said Colasonti, 62. “We want to be there for them.” Rowse and DeBoer, who met in 1999, exchanged vows at a “commitment ceremony” in 2008. They have not yet planned out a full-fledged wedding — partly, DeBoer said, because they don’t want to assume they will win, and partly, Rowse said, because they haven’t the time. “It took almost a year to plan our commitment ceremony, and that was only 30 people,” she said. “Much less the five million who want to come now.”
They have four children now, two boys and two girls, all age 6 and younger. Even the older ones don’t understand what their parents are up to, DeBoer said.
Or maybe they understand it better than a lot of adults.
“They don’t realize it’s just Jayne and I getting married. They believe that the whole family is going to marry, that we’re all going to marry each other,” she said. “I think, in the end, it’s true. We are all going to get married. We’re going to be a complete legal family.”