Before Shelton Stroman and Chris Inniss on Tuesday became lead plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s ban on same-sex marriages, they consulted with their 9-year-old son Jonathan.
“You should be able to get married,” Jonathan told his adoptive parents, and then quoted a line from Dr. Seuss. “A person is a person, no matter how small.”
Stroman, 42, and Inniss, 39, joined two other couples, including two Atlanta Police officers, and a widow in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. It asks a federal judge to find unconstitutional a constitutional amendment ratified by voters in 2004 outlawing gay marriages.
Georgia became the final Southern state — and one of the last overall — with same-sex marriage litigation pending. More than five dozen lawsuits challenging existing marriage laws in 30 states and Puerto Rico await hearings, according to a analysis by Lambda Legal.
At a Tuesday news conference, Beth Littrell, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal and the lead lawyer for the seven Georgia plaintiffs, said her organization decided to file the Georgia lawsuit after a number of federal judges nationwide struck down same-sex marriage bans in other states.
“Momentum is behind us,” Littrell said. “There is an unbroken string of successes in the federal courts. … It’s discrimination, pure and simple, and it’s wrong.”
Lambda Legal is joined in the litigation by two other law firms, Bryan Cave LLP of Washington and White & Case LLP from Miami.
Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, estimated that there are 21,000 to 22,000 same-sex couples in Georgia and that one-quarter of these couples are raising children.
“It is a travesty that we put loving couples through this,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference. “It’s an important day that we step forward for justice.”
The suit, which seeks class-action status, was filed against state Registrar and Director of Records Deborah Aderhold, a Fulton County Probate Court judge and the clerk of the Gwinnett County Probate Court.
Last June’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits has eased the path for proponents of gay marriage. Justice Antonin Scalia predicted as much in his dissent, saying the court’s majority “arms well every challenge to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”
Jerry Luquire, president of Georgia’s Christian Coalition and a supporter of the state’s ban, said gay marriage has taken a backseat to more pressing issues on the political landscape.
“I don’t think think it’ll be a decisive issue in the (2014) elections” for governor and U.S. Senate, Luquire said.
Since the Supreme Court decision, federal judges in Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia have overturned state laws banning same-sex marriages. Those rulings are being appealed.
Also in recent weeks, federal judges in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee have thrown out parts of those states’ marriage restrictions, such as their refusal to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
“Marriage is the holy thing that describes our commitment,” said Inniss, a veterinarian. “Let’s say Shelton is in the hospital in critical care. I’d have to through all kind of hoops just to visit him.”
The couple, together since 2001, just filed separate tax returns. “We don’t get the tax breaks married couples receive,” said Stroman, who owns a pet hotel in Snellville. “People take these things for granted.”
Their lawsuit says gays and lesbians in Georgia who want to marry are being denied equal protection by subjecting same-sex couples to unequal financial burdens, legal vulnerability and related stress. It also sends a purposeful message that Georgia views lesbians and gay men and their children as second-class members of society who do not deserve the same legal protection, respect and support as different-sex spouses and their families, reads the complaint.
The other plaintiffs are:
- Rayshawn Chandler, 29, and Avery Chandler, 30, of Jonesboro. Both women are Atlanta police officers and Avery Chandler is a sergeant in the Army Reserves and scheduled to deploy to Kuwait this summer. Their marriage last year in Connecticut is not recognized in Georgia.
- Michael Bishop, 50, and Shane Thomas, 44, of Atlanta. Bishop is a lawyer at AT&T and Thomas is a Realtor who served in the Air National Guard. They are raising a 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter.
- Jennifer Sisson, 34, of Decatur. On Valentine's Day in 2013, Sisson married her longtime partner, Pamela Drenner, in New York at City Hall. After Drenner died in March, the state did not recognize their marriage on Drenner's death certificate.
Georgia’s ban on same-sex marriage received widespread support in 2004 when 76 percent of voters ratified a constitutional amendment to prohibit such unions.
Now, according to a poll commissioned in September by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, more Georgians support gay marriage than oppose it. The poll was conducted by telephone among a random sample of 801 adults and has a margin of sampling error of 5 percentage points.
It found that 48 percent of residents favored gay marriage, with 43 percent against. The largest pool of support for same-sex marriage came from residents between the ages of 18 and 39. The strongest opposition came from residents older than 65.
And opponents appear less mobilized than in 2004, when Democrats accused Republican George W. Bush of exploiting gay marriage as a wedge issue to siphon votes away from their nominee, John Kerry, in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
So far, the issue has barely come up in the Republican primary race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “I don’t think either side wants (to talk about gay marriage), but it could be used to hurt the other,” Luquire predicted.
Stroman and Inniss said they’ve been warmly received by most of the neighbors in their middle-class Gwinnett County subdivision
“We’re a part of the babysitting club,” Stroman said. “Sometimes we have 10, 11 kids staying over. We have really great friends here.”
Many want to know why they haven’t tied the knot in a state where gay marriage is legal.
“We have friends who’ve gone to New York or wherever to get married, but to us it’s like you were married for a weekend then you’re not when you come back,” Inniss said. “This is our home, and this is where we want to marry.”
On Tuesday, Rayshawn and Avery Chandler said they were private people who decided to file suit on behalf of others like them across the state.
“This wasn’t easy because we serve the public,” Avery Chandler said. “We’re very private people. … But this was way bigger than us. Why not us? It was time to step forward.”
When asked what reception the couple has received from fellow police officers for joining the litigation, Chandler said, “We’ll know in a little while.”
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