First Comes Love

People usually raise an eyebrow when Alan Ziegler tells them he had a shotgun wedding. Of course, neither he nor his fiancé, LeRoy Fitzwater, was pregnant when they wed, but “there was an election coming.”

Ziegler grew up near Cape Girardeau, earned his physical-therapy degree at Saint Louis University, and then moved to California for work. He met Fitzwater, a Boeing engineer with a doctorate from Stanford University, at a party in 2001. Their relationship runs on balance. Ziegler is outgoing, spontaneous, carefree. Fitzwater is more reserved, prudent. Ziegler might decide he wants to go to Kansas City, jump in the car, and leave. Fitzwater might ask, “Why didn’t you mention this three days ago?”

In May 2008, the California Supreme Court threw out the state’s gay-marriage ban. Immediately, opponents of same-sex marriage put Proposition 8 on the ballot. It would amend the state constitution to say “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

The election was November 4.

“LeRoy, we have to get married before the election,” Ziegler told his partner, “because it’s going to pass.” Fitzwater was more hopeful that the measure would fail, though he agreed it would be wiser not to risk it. They targeted July, looking for a date that worked for the church, reception venue, and band. They pushed the wedding to September, then October, and finally November 1, three days before the big vote. Finally, Ziegler told them it had to be that day.

As the couple’s big day drew near, the bitter Proposition 8 campaign intensified. The couple attended protests, made calls. They’d find “Yes on 8” and “Protect Traditional Marriage” flyers on their cars, in their mailbox, under their doormat. People marched on sidewalks with “Save Our Children” signs. “It was very hurtful,” Ziegler says. “You would go to the grocery store, you wouldn’t know if the people there were for you or against you.”

Ziegler wanted his grandmother to attend the wedding, but he’d never found the right time to come out to her. He called, broaching the subject delicately. She needed to come to California, because they were having a party. There was a rumor that the couple might be moving for Fitzwater’s job. She asked if Teske’s Germania, the restaurant in San Jose, Calif., where they were regulars, was throwing them a going-away bash. “No, we’re having a party that says we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives,” Ziegler explained.

“Oh, you’re getting married,” she said.

“What?” Ziegler asked, surprised at her lack of surprise.

“I watch the news,” she said. “I know what’s going on in California.”

She came to the wedding, her first time traveling in years. In all, the couple had 125 guests representing 11 states. They joked about having groomsmen and groomsmaids. The ceremony was held at Stanford Memorial Church, an architectural gem reminiscent of European cathedrals. The Rev. Wilma Reichard presided. She quoted Jesus, but added her own flourish. “Therefore what God has joined together,” she said, “let no person—let no state—separate.”

The reception was held at the German restaurant. Guests dined on Jägerschnitzel, pepper steak, and rotisserie chicken. For dessert, instead of cake, there was apple strudel. The Internationals, a polka band, performed. When most people think “gay wedding,” big German men in lederhosen playing accordions might not come to mind.

The videographer went from table to table, asking guests to offer a congratulatory message for the couple. Many added “down with 8.” It was so emotional, the couple still hasn’t watched the DVD. “There was happiness, but there was also tension in the room,” Ziegler says.

The next morning, he went with his mother and grandmother to return the rented tuxes. He stopped at an intersection in front of a huge “Yes on 8” demonstration. When he saw a sign referencing pedophilia, less than 24 hours after he’d said “I do,” with his confused grandmother sitting next to him, he snapped. He honked the horn, yelled. “I got pissed off,” he says. “I was mad, sad, and everything.”

Proposition 8 passed. Same-sex marriage was once again banned in California. Later, the state decided to recognize the marriages of those couples, like Ziegler and Fitzwater, who were able to arrange weddings while they were legal.

For five years, they lived as a married couple in San Jose. There were occasional challenges. Employers were hesitant to put a same-sex spouse on health-insurance plans. Eventually, they worked it out. Employment paperwork can be a hassle for opposite-sex couples, too.

Then Fitzwater’s job at Boeing required him to move to St. Louis. All of a sudden, in the eyes of their new home state, Ziegler and Fitzwater were no longer married.

Now, they are among 10 same-sex couples suing Missouri to have their marriages, performed elsewhere, recognized here. (And just before this issue went to press, the city of St. Louis mounted its own legal challenge to the statewide ban.)

Legally, a spouse’s rights matter mostly in bad times: illness or death, court battle or financial crisis. Fitzwater and Ziegler are young, healthy, and have good jobs, so their altered status hasn’t wrecked their lives. But they recently bought a house in Soulard. For most couples, the purchase process involves signing so many forms, hand cramps pose a clear and present danger. And in their case, on form after form, the couple had to check the “single” box.

“There’s always that reminder we’re not viewed as a married couple here,” Fitzwater says.

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Arlene Zarembka came out to her parents on Christmas Eve 1979. That’s a tall task today, but it was infinitely more so 35 years ago. She sat her parents down at the family home in Clayton. They promised to listen, no interruptions, for 10 minutes. Her father was a taciturn man, but when Zarembka finished her spiel, he spoke first.

“We still love you,” he told his youngest child. “I guess my genes got mixed up the last time.”

Mom had more questions. Is this a phase? What happens in the bedroom? Once that was settled, she said, “You’re my daughter, and I love you, so it must be OK.”

Astounding. In 1979, nobody reacted that way to a daughter coming out. The next day, on Christmas morning, rather than hanging out with her family, Zarembka drove all over town, bragging to her gay and lesbian friends about her supportive parents. Soon, her folks were famous within the community. “I remember feeling like now that I knew that my parents were behind me,” she says, “I could do anything that I wanted.”

Her relationship with Zuleyma Tang-Martinez was borne of coincidence, liberal intellectualism, and an interest in Nazis. “That can be taken the wrong way,” Tang-Martinez says.

In 1983, Zarembka was among the speakers at an event marking the 10th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In the audience, Tang-Martinez was impressed. A week later, they ran into each other at a screening of a movie about the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The next day, Tang-Martinez was planning to ride with a friend to Edwardsville, Ill., where radical leftist Angela Davis was speaking. As it turned out, the same person had offered a ride to Zarembka.

They sat in the back seat together, gabbing the whole way there and back. Then they tagged along with some friends to a party and talked until 3 o’clock in the morning. When telling this story, Zarembka, who owns a T-shirt that says, “I break into song at the slightest provocation,” sings a few lines of “Happy Talk” from South Pacific. People thought they were already a couple. Within a week, they were. What did they discuss that night? Racism, sexism, and most of all, anti-Semitism.

Zarembka’s family wasn’t Jewish, but her mother was so shocked by the horror of the Holocaust, she would burst into tears at the dinner table just thinking about it. As a teenager, Tang-Martinez had read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, then William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shortly after meeting, the couple traveled together to Ohio for a conference on women and fascism in Nazi Germany. “Isn’t this wonderful?” Zarembka’s mother said. “You met a woman who shares your interest in Nazism!”

Over more than 30 years together, Zarembka and Tang-Martinez have seen the gay-rights movement grow from its infancy. They remember an early pride parade in the Central West End. Only a few dozen people were brave enough to show up, and many of them wore paper bags over their heads, for fear of being recognized. Being a lesbian was like being part of an underground world.

They felt sick in 1986, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled 5–4 to uphold Georgia’s sodomy law, which made homosexual acts a crime. In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger quoted texts referring to gay sex as an “infamous crime against nature” and worse than rape, before writing, “To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

At that time, Missouri was among 25 states with sodomy laws. The Show-Me State law’s broad definition of “deviate sexual intercourse” included “any act involving the genitals of one person and the hand, mouth, tongue, or anus of another person or a sexual act involving the penetration, however slight, of the male or female sex organ or the anus by a finger, instrument or object done for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of any person or for the purpose of terrorizing the victim.” From today’s perspective, it can be difficult to make sense of past legislators’ puritanical desire to govern bedroom activity. The takeaway: Keep your fingers, “however slight,” to yourself.

In the wake of the Hardwick decision, a group of locals founded PREP, which later became PROMO, Missouri’s first statewide gay-rights advocacy organization. Zarembka and Tang-Martinez were early organizers. Political insiders warned that no state lawmakers would touch LGBT issues, but they held a gay lobby day in Jefferson City anyway. Zarembka remembers the shocked look on a senator’s face when 30 people from his district showed up at his office, asking him to repeal the sodomy law. He didn’t know that he had gay constituents.

“We had people who said, ‘I’ve never met a gay person before,’” Tang-Martinez says. “We’re like, ‘Yes, you have. You just don’t know it.’”

In 1992, PREP helped pass HIV/AIDS legislation that was hailed as a national model. And in 1999, the organization led a successful charge to add sexual orientation, gender, and disability to Missouri’s hate-crime statute, in the wake of the Matthew Shepard killing in Wyoming.

Over the years, Zarembka and Tang-Martinez have experienced their share of hatred. Once, at a pride event in University City, their car was stopped at a light. Some young men in the vehicle behind them started hollering. Tang-Martinez got out, thinking maybe there was something wrong with the car. She quickly realized they were screaming slurs, not automotive-maintenance tips. To escape, the couple turned left, but the guys turned, too, and tried to run them off the road.

It wasn’t until 2003 that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed its previous sodomy decision, ruling 6–3 in Lawrence v. Texas that the Lone Star State’s “Homosexual Conduct” law was unconstitutional. That invalidated sodomy laws across the country, including in Missouri. Soon after, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, a landmark moment, but one that was met with backlash from conservative states.

In 2004, the year that saw the nation’s first legal gay weddings, Missouri became the first state to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Amendment 2 stated “that to be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman.” It passed with 71 percent of the vote.

The city of St. Louis was the only jurisdiction that voted against it.

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Despite legal impediments, Zarembka and Tang-Martinez have repeatedly affirmed their relationship. In 1985, they exchanged rings at The Ladle, a restaurant that didn’t last nearly as long as the couple’s love. Zarembka’s father took pictures, while her mother read poetry. From Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she quoted “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Afterward, friends surprised them with a limo ride through the CWE. People on the sidewalk cheered, or acted shocked to see two women, or both.

In addition to their fascination with fascism, the couple also shares a love of nature. Growing up in Venezuela, Tang-Martinez would often spend summers with her grandparents in a rural village. They had a pet toucan and roosters that crowed in the morning. She would walk to a well for water. Zarembka and Tang-Martinez’s favorite vacation was a field course of the geology of Yellowstone National Park.

They married on July 18, 2005, during a trip through the Canadian Rockies. They arranged to meet with a marriage commissioner in Golden, British Columbia, expecting a courthouse-style, rote ceremony. Instead, when they arrived at Alice Pallard’s house, she invited them out to a nearby lake. Neighbors attended as witnesses and brought a gift.

“That sort of atmosphere, it was like they were really happy about it, excited,” Zarembka says. “It was just amazing.” (This summer, the couple is taking another trip to Canada, and they are planning a reunion with Pallard.)

Then, in 2008, for the 25th anniversary of their first date, they threw a weekend-long celebration at the Saint Louis Art Museum. On Friday night, they had a recommitment ceremony under a chuppah, with 30 or so family members and close gay and lesbian friends. “We often refer to each other as family,” Zarembka says. “I think that’s certainly more true for older gays and lesbians, because we came out in a period when there was a lot more hostility.”

On Saturday, they held a larger reception at the museum, with games, dancing, and dessert. The couple laughs trying to remember the games (e.g., “How much do you know about Arlene and Zuleyma?”) and what songs the DJ played (“Fly Me to the Moon”).

In essence, these two women have had three weddings, and still, Missouri doesn’t recognize them as married.

Zarembka approaches this reality from a practical perspective. She’s an attorney, and many of her clients are same-sex couples. She’s an expert on the ways that not being legally recognized as a spouse puts a person at a disadvantage, as well as various workarounds. The potential issues can go well beyond the symbolic annoyances that pester Fitzwater and Ziegler.

Spouses are entitled to a number of rights and privileges, many of which come into play during times of trouble. In case of medical emergency, a spouse can make healthcare decisions or file workers’ compensation claims on a person’s behalf. A spouse can also take time off work to care for an ailing partner under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Spouses of state employees can receive health-insurance benefits. The same is true at many private employers. In retirement, spouses can receive Social Security benefits, and they have a right to share a room in a Medicare- or Medicaid-approved nursing home. In court, spouses can sue for wrongful death damages, but don’t have to testify against their partners.

If someone dies without a will, a spouse automatically inherits assets and can handle remains. “Obviously, at the time of somebody dying, that’s the worst time to suddenly discover that you have no right to handle somebody’s body and decide what to do,” Zarembka says. Some—but certainly not all—of these things can be fixed with a will, a durable power of attorney, a trust, and so on. “It’s just incredibly important that people have those documents in place, keep them in a safe place, like a safety deposit box, where they’re not going to get lost or stolen.”

Tang-Martinez reacts more emotionally. For nearly 40 years, she’s worked as a biology professor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She’s taught thousands of the state’s students. “Despite all of that, I felt like a second-class citizen,” she says. “You are being treated as if your marriage is not real, not meaningful.”

The university follows the state’s lead for insurance eligibility, so Tang-Martinez was never able to put Zarembka on her health, dental, or vision plans. Because a significant portion of a professor’s compensation is benefits, she argues that compared to colleagues in opposite-sexmarriages, she was paid less.

Though she continues to teach part-time, Tang-Martinez officially retired a couple of years ago. At the time, the university did not offer domestic-partner benefits. She had been fighting for them for decades. Recently, though, the university has extended benefits to same-sex couples. “They call them SAD—Sponsored Adult Dependent—which is sad,” she says.

When Tang-Martinez applied, she was informed that she wasn’t eligible, since she retired before the change. “They grandfathered us out,” Zarembka says.

Now she’s getting emotional, too. It galls her that only recognized spouses can be listed on a death certificate. “Right now, we would be listed as single for all public records for eternity, which would be a lie,” she says. If somebody digs up that death certificate 50 years or 500 years from now, it will show that she died single.

“And we’re not single!”

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Sherie Schild and Jan Barrier have experienced firsthand some of the pitfalls that Zarembka discusses in hypothetical terms.

For most of her career, Barrier was the area director in charge of eastern Missouri for the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration. She was unable to get insurance coverage through work for Schild, who was self-employed. Because of Schild’s persistent health problems, they had to purchase her coverage through the state’s high-risk insurance pool, at a cost of $14,000 a year, plus deductible.

Shortly after they met in the early ’80s, Schild was in the hospital with pneumonia. A nurse wanted Barrier to leave. Schild asked whether her partner could stay.

“Well, your business partner is going to need to leave,” the nurse said.

It was a first-floor room, so Barrier pretended to leave, then came back in through the window. The couple was sitting on the bed, holding hands, when the nurse came back, turned on the lights, and screamed. “She didn’t like us holding hands,” Barrier says. She was escorted out by security.

Schild was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer in 1996. She had a double mastectomy, then chemotherapy.

Before, Barrier had kept her relationship with Schild a secret. She didn’t bring her partner to office picnics, didn’t have a photo on her desk. But when Schild was diagnosed with cancer, she felt no choice but to explain the situation to her bosses. She says they weren’t pleased. “They were not very happy about their manager in St. Louis being openly gay,” she says. “They felt like the construction community was way too conservative to have a woman, let alone an openly gay woman.”

At the same time, Schild came out to her family for the first time. Overall, they were supportive, though one aunt did tell the cancer patient that she was going to hell for “being a fruit.”

When Barrier asked for time off to go to Schild’s first chemo session, she was denied. The Family and Medical Leave Act didn’t cover her. When Barrier protested, she was told that if she requested any more leave, she would be transferred to Iowa. Despite the threat, she asked for time off when Schild had another surgery. She was given two options: transfer or be fired. “I felt a lot of fear, because my life partner wasn’t going to be with me during this ordeal,” Schild says. She contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which took Barrier’s case.

The two sides reached a settlement, in which Barrier would be permitted to transfer to the Illinois office and take a demotion, rather than being fired. “In my opinion, it was a discriminatory settlement,” she says. “They pushed me out and made my life a living hell.”

To get away from the stress of Schild’s cancer treatments and Barrier’s workplace drama, the couple took a trip to Hawaii in 1997. “If for some reason she passes away, we’ll have some happy memories,” Barrier thought. They walked on the beach and ate romantic dinners. On Maui, they rented a convertible. But most of all, what they remember is how welcoming people were. They traveled with Olivia, a cruise line for lesbians. They received a hearty welcome in every port. “They were excited that the lesbian ship had arrived,” Barrier says, laughing.

Medical bills continued to mount. Schild had a total hysterectomy in 1998. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002. Barrier cashed out her retirement account before age 50. They each burned their life savings paying for medical bills and insurance premiums, when if they had been an opposite-sex married couple, Schild simply would have been covered.

At the Illinois office, Barrier alleges she was forced to retire. “It’s very painful that my career was ruined,” she says.

That, combined with Schild’s ongoing health problems—gallbladder surgery had to be postponed until after further cancer treatment—made it a dark time. Meanwhile, despite their own struggles, Barrier and Schild opened their home to family members in need. Schild’s mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer two years before her daughter, lived with them. At various times, so did Barrier’s minor brother and her nephew.

In 2009, a St. Louis couple, Ed Reggi and Scott Emanuel, began organizing Show Me Marriage Equality Bus trips to Iowa, where same-sex marriage is legal. Barrier and Schild took the first one. Their rabbis came, too. They left early in the morning on May 1. The charter bus was packed.

There were more women than men on the bus, which led to some impatience from the guys at rest stops, with a line stretching out the door of the ladies’ room. Reggi came up saying, “Hurry up! We gotta leave!”

“But we’re not done yet!” the women protested.

When they crossed the state line, everyone celebrated. “Free at last!”

Same-sex marriage in Iowa was relatively new, so the couples weren’t sure how they would be received in Iowa City. Would people on the sidewalk throw bricks or throw rice? As it turned out, they did neither—they waved rainbow flags instead.

The couples got their marriage licenses at the courthouse and then went outside for pictures. The ceremonies took place at a Unitarian church. Reggi and Emanuel went first. Then it was Barrier and Schild. Their rabbis joined them together under a chuppah.

“I thought I was going to pass out,” Schild says of the moment when she slipped the ring on Barrier’s finger. “I really never thought I was going to be able to marry the love of my life.”

“Then we kissed,” Barrier says. “It was like we couldn’t believe it.”

The church ladies had made them cookies. After a luncheon, it was time to get back on the bus. The day was special, to be sure, but Barrier wishes their families could have been there. “It was kind of like we eloped to Las Vegas or something,” she says.

That same year, saddled with medical expenses and a heavy tax burden, Barrier declared bankruptcy. In that process, once again, she could not include Schild’s expenses. She went back to work, taking a position at CitiMortgage, where she could receive domestic-partner health benefits covering Schild. Then in 2012, Barrier was diagnosed with rectal cancer.

For Schild and Barrier, whose name is on the marriage-recognition lawsuit (Barrier v. Vasterling), participating in the litigation was a matter of practicality. They’re both relatively healthy now, but if either relapses, they might end up in a nursing home. They want to share a room—maybe even hold hands.

“We are fearful that if we end up in a nursing home, our privacy and relationship will not be recognized,” Barrier says. “We have a very genuine fear that this is what might happen to us.”

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Just in the decade since Missouri passed its ban, public and judicial opinion of same-sex marriage has changed radically. A slow trickle of states has followed Massachusetts’ lead, either through legislation or court ruling: Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York… A watershed moment came on Election Day 2012, when voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington chose to legalize gay marriage.

In May 2013, Missouri state Sen. Jolie Justus, the legislature’s first openly gay member, sponsored a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians. It passed the Senate before stalling in the House. (At the federal level, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would later follow a similar path, passing in the Senate before languishing in the House.)

On June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in, with two rulings supporting same-sex marriage. In one, it allowed a lower court’s ruling that invalidated Proposition 8 to stand, meaning gay weddings could resume in California. In the other, it struck down a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, meaning married same-sex couples are eligible for federal benefits. Both times, the court voted 5–4.

The court remains divided on this issue, just as it was in 1986. But even for those whose position hasn’t changed, their vocabulary has. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion, arguing that giving same-sex couples the right to marry “conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import.” Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent was pointed, at times vitriolic, but even there, you will find no comparisons between gay sex and rape.

Shortly after those rulings, the IRS announced it would accept joint filings from same-sex couples, and in November, Gov. Jay Nixon announced that Missouri would do the same, despite the constitutional ban. “Many Missourians, including myself, are thinking about these issues of equality in new ways,” said Nixon, reversing his previous position on the topic. “I think if folks want to get married, they should be able to get married.”

On June 1 of this year, Illinois’ same-sex marriage law went into effect statewide. When signing it late last year, Gov. Pat Quinn referenced a more accomplished politician. “In the very beginning of the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln of Illinois said that our nation was conceived in liberty,” he said. “And he said it’s dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and that’s really what we’re celebrating today.”

As of this writing, there have been 22 lower-court rulings on same-sex marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Defense of Marriage Act decision. All 22 have gone in favor of that liberty. Gay and lesbian couples can legally marry in 19 states, plus D.C., covering nearly half of the U.S. population. In 12 other states, rulings for marriage equality—or at least recognition—are on hold pending appeals. Every remaining marriage ban is being challenged in court, including the one subject to the ACLU marriage-recognition suit here in Missouri. Meanwhile, recent polls show that half of Americans believe same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, an all-time high. “Right side of history” has become the most popular political buzz phrase, rather than the now-taboo “gay agenda.”

While the battle might not be decided, it’s trending in a clear direction. Still, the uneven march toward inclusion creates some awkward situations, like those of the Missouri couples. Ziegler and Fitzwater talk about going on vacation and checking to see whether their marriage will count where they’re headed. Driving from state to state, the legal validity of their marriage flashes in and out like cellphone reception. They always pack their papers. “My parents don’t have to do that,” Ziegler says.

Even as they fight for legal recognition, the couples have witnessed social change. Barrier and Schild live in Olivette, with a municipal domestic-partnership registry. “Sherie will hold my hand in the car now,” Barrier says. “It’s especially true with the younger generation. They don’t think anything of our being in a same-sex relationship.”

“It’s so much more open,” Tang-Martinez says.

Schild, despite all she’s been through, might be the most optimistic of all. “Just in our lifetime, we’re seeing the momentum change,” she says. “I never thought I was going to see it.” She believes national same-sex marriage is on the horizon. And while some of the others say they aren’t trailblazers, just people standing up for their rights, Schild’s proud to be part of the lawsuit. “I see it as sort of like a privilege to be able to be part of history,” she says.

Given the national winning streak, ACLU of Missouri legal director Tony Rothert likes their chances (although last year, the ACLU lost its bid to gain survivor benefits for the partner of a Missouri Highway Patrol officer who was killed in the line of duty). A hearing is set for September 25. “We think we’re right, morally and legally right,” he says.

On June 25, the same week as the 35th annual PrideFest, the city of St. Louis issued four marriage licenses to same-sex couples, holding ceremonies in Mayor Francis Slay’s City Hall office—a direct challenge to the state’s constitutional ban. “If we weren’t doing this,” Slay said, “no other city in Missouri would.”

The next day, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued the city to stop the weddings. “While I personally support the goal of marriage equality, my duty is to defend the laws of the state of Missouri,” Koster said. “While many people in Missouri have changed their minds regarding marriage equality, Missourians have yet to change their constitution.”

“Ultimately,” Rothert says, “an issue this important will probably be decided by the United States Supreme Court.”

In the Defense of Marriage Act ruling, the court said only that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages from states that allow them. Overturning the bans of all the states that don’t would be a much larger step, one that the justices might not be willing to take. Many bans, like Missouri’s, were implemented democratically.

Even if same-sex marriage loses in the high court, though, Rothert believes voters will eventually embrace it. “Telling stories and explaining the discrimination and the harm that Missouri’s laws do to families will change minds,” he says. “We can end discrimination that way, too.”