They showed up on campus Thursday night carrying a canvas sign, covered with words.
No union is more profound than marriage for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family …
Danielle Beebe and Cayla Iske arrived early enough to get seats in the auditorium close to where the man in a red-and-white bow tie would soon speak.
Iske wore gray fleece and her hair in a bun. Beebe wore a flowered jacket and jeans.
They both wore wedding rings.
This summer, a friend wrote down those words — delivered by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on June 26, 2015. She used all the colors of the rainbow in a careful script, sentence by sentence.
In forming a marital union, two people became greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death ...
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She read those words at Beebe and Iske’s wedding in August, just before the couple recited their vows and walked down the grassy outdoor aisle in white wedding dresses.
It would disrespect these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is they do respect it, they respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment themselves ...
The case before the court was called Obergefell v. Hodges, and it would determine whether same-sex marriage would become legal across the land. There were more than 30 plaintiffs who sought legal recognition and protection.
Their hope is to not be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right ...
The vote was 5-4.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed ...
It is so ordered.
While a nation watched, a man in a lavender bow tie spoke in front of the Supreme Court, softly lauding the decision that redefined the legal definition of marriage, surrounded by a joyful throng.
This fall, when the newlyweds heard Jim Obergefell would be on the UNL campus, they made plans to drive down from Omaha.
They brought that sign to thank him.
“I think about it a lot, what we owe to a lot of people who poured so much energy and time into the lives of others they’ll never meet,†Beebe says. “And he is one of them.â€
* * *
The couple from Omaha met Jan. 2, 2015.
They had circles of friends who overlapped and a group of them spent the evening at a bar in the Old Market.
The next day was their official first date, at the Henry Doorly Zoo, and a second date followed, Beer School at Empyrean Brewing in Lincoln. Before the week was over, they knew.
Day 6: an I love you from Beebe and an I love you back from Iske.
On Day 7, flowers.
Every day, they talked and talked and talked.
They loved each other long-distance while Iske worked on her graduate degrees in Ames, Iowa, and Beebe worked in public relations, first in Lincoln and then in Omaha.
They hiked and camped and biked and dreamed.
They both wanted to be the one to propose, so they each did.
Iske’s surprise came first. Pancakes on the griddle that spelled out: Marry Me?
Beebe followed with brownies and balloons at HyVee: I will dance in grocery store aisles with you. I will scrub dirty bathrooms with you ... I will love you forever. Cayla Jo Iske, will you marry me?
Customers clapped.
One said: Really, at the grocery store?
They set a date and found a vineyard outside of Lincoln for their wedding and invited 150 friends and family.
Even before the wedding, they had a five-year plan: Buy a house. Travel. Puppies. Kids.
Beebe, 31, grew up in York. Iske, 27, is from Gretna.
“I feel very fortunate to be alive and to come into my own during a time when our country has kind of come into its own on this issue,†Beebe said. “It’s pretty remarkable.â€
She’d watched the gay marriage issue from Nebraska as states passed their own marriage equality laws. She ticked them off on a mental map.
“Dreaming someday, one day, I would live in one of those states.â€
Nebraska didn’t look like it would be one of them.
Early in their relationship, in the months leading up to June 2015, the pair were dizzy in love.
“It was hard to have finally met that person you want to marry and knowing we couldn’t,†Iske says.
“But I remember when the ruling passed, it was monumental in my mind. Nobody could stop us.â€
* * *
The man in the red-and-white bow tie takes the stage.
The auditorium on the second floor of the UNL Student Union is nearly full with a mix of students and faculty and community members.
It’s National Coming Out Day.
The day after his husband’s birthday, Obergefell says.
The widower talks about John Arthur, his spouse, who died from ALS — Lou Gehrig’s disease — months after they flew from their home in Ohio to Maryland to get married.
He calls his talk a “love and loss and the law story.â€
He’s co-written a book; travels to speak about the landmark decision and his personal story.
They never left the plane that day in Maryland, he says. Arthur was too medically fragile.
They’d been together for 21 years, living and working in Cincinnati, where Obergefell had grown up in a large Catholic family.
Obergefell’s dad was a blue-collar factory worker and his mom had a job at the library.
Everyone he knew grew up and got married “to someone of the opposite sex,†Obergefell says.
As a boy, he’d steal away with the Sears catalog and turn pages until he came to men’s underwear.
He felt shame then, he says.
He was 26 and in graduate school when he went on a weekend road trip with two friends. One of them called out a question to her passengers: Are you gay or straight?
Gay, one friend answered.
Obergefell’s mouth went dry.
He had a hard time getting the words out, but when he did: “I immediately felt this weight lift from my shoulders. For me, everything changed in that moment.â€
Life changed again after his marriage, Obergefell says.
“We felt different. We felt better. We felt more complete.â€
Five days after the wedding, they started the journey that would lead to the Supreme Court; challenging Ohio law that prevented Obergefell from listing his name as spouse on Arthur’s death certificate.
John Montgomery Arthur died three months and 11 days after their June 23, 2013, wedding.
In those months, they called each other the same name over and over and over, Obergefell says.
“I bet we said ‘husband’ a thousand times.â€
* * *
The couple with the sign listen as Obergefell talks about the journey to the Supreme Court.
About the other plaintiffs who stood beside him with their own stories of discrimination under the law.
Telling his own story of love and grief.
Iske squeezes Beebe’s hand when the bow-tied man talks about how he met his husband, the whirlwind romance, the dates.
“It was love at third sight,†he says. “I knew within days this was the person I wanted to spend my life with.â€
So much like their story.
They watched him tear up telling the crowd he would give up everything — the book, the speaking tour, the acclaim — to have his husband back.
After the talk and the questions, they stood in line to have a moment with the man they admire.
They thanked him.
They showed him wedding pictures and he signed his name to the sign they carried, right below the last four words: It is so ordered.
Then they posed beside him and smiled, the canvas covered in the rainbow-colored sentences that carry so much weight between them.
“Someday our children will read about him in their history books,†Beebe said the next day. “And we’ll get to show them the pictures from when we met.â€