Some snapshots of Americans reacting to Friday’s Supreme Court ruling declaring that same-sex couples have a right to marry in all 50 states.
___
TEXAS
Customers at a Dallas comic-book store were confronted by a sign Friday warning that Red Pegasus Games & Comics might open late because the owners were “waiting at the courthouse to see if the Supreme Court is going to let us get married.”
Kenneth Denson, 38, and Gabriel Mendez, 33, have been together for 15 years.
They had a nonbinding commitment ceremony 10 years ago in Dallas, and they were legally married in 2013 in California, but they still wanted to do the same in Texas.
“We’re Texans,” Denson said. “We want to get married in Texas.”
Both wore matching gray T-shirts from their business.
Judge Ken Molberg, the administrative district judge for Dallas County, said judges would be available to do ceremonies Friday and that the county’s 72-hour waiting period after getting a license could be waived.
___
ARKANSAS
The judge who struck down Arkansas’ gay-marriage ban last year presided Friday over one of the state’s first same-sex weddings after the Supreme Court’s historic ruling.
Pulaski County Judge Chris Piazza married two men in a brief ceremony in his Little Rock courtroom. He said it was the only same-sex wedding he planned to conduct.
“I looked at their faces and realized how much this meant to them,” Piazza said.
The couple, Tony Chiaro, 73, and Earnie Matheson, 65, have been together 26 years. They said they sought out Piazza because of his ruling last year.
“We could have gone off and done it somewhere else … but it meant so much to do it here,” Matheson said.
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes a little over a year after Piazza struck down a 2004 voter-approved amendment and an earlier state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
More than 500 couples were married in the week following Piazza’s ruling before it was suspended by the state Supreme Court pending a review. State justices have not issued a ruling.
___
MINNESOTA
Friday’s ruling was a bittersweet victory for Richard Carlbom, who led efforts to defeat a Minnesota gay marriage ban in 2012 and then legalize it in 2013 before becoming director of state campaigns for Freedom to Marry.
“I have three months to wind down my work. The organization will probably close our doors in six to 12 months,” Carlbom said. “Isn’t it wonderful when a nonprofit organization has to go out of business?”
Carlbom married in 2013 and have had to deal with uncertainty while traveling and when his husband began graduate school in Ohio, where his marriage wasn’t recognized.
“If something happens to me, he’s not my spouse in the eyes of Ohio,” he said. “I’m a 33-year-old married man whose parents would have to be called in to help make medical decisions. The court recognized that today.”
___
OHIO
After hearing about Friday’s ruling, a Cincinnati couple immediately headed to the marriage license bureau.
Ethan Fletcher and Andrew Hickam have been engaged nearly two years, but wanted to wait in hopes same-sex marriage would become legal in Ohio.
Fletcher says after getting their license, they will begin planning an August wedding with friends and family.
Said the 31-year-old college academic adviser: “I’m just overwhelmed with joy.”
___
Associated Press writers Brian Bakst in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Claudia Lauer in Little Rock contributed to this report.
