“To our husbands, with love.”
That’s the dedication that kicks off the new book "Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality,” and it feels a fitting place to kick off this article, too. At its core, “Love Wins” could have easily been a book about a trial — the one that paved the way for the Supreme Court to make marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states. But “Love Wins” is, as its title suggests, a love story — the love plaintiff Jim Obergefell shared with his late husband John Arthur. The love that prompted him to sue to have his marriage recognized in his home state of Ohio so that when John died, Jim would be listed as the surviving spouse on his death certificate. The love that motivated Jim to keep fighting even after John died of ALS — all the way to the Supreme Court and in the year that has followed the marriage equality decision.
“I knew that needed to be the dedication of the book before I even started writing,” author Debbie Cenziper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the former wife of John Arthur’s first cousin, explained. “This is a legal thriller, but at the heart of this book is a love story.”
Debbie had been circling around the idea of writing a book since 2007, but as she says, nothing really felt right — until the story of Jim and John came to her attention. She’d met Jim and John at her wedding to her now ex-husband, and they had casually kept in touch over the years, but they weren’t particularly close. In fact, she learned about Jim’s fight to be legally recognized as John’s husband when she read about it in the news like most people.
“It really moved me in a way that I don’t think I’d ever been moved before,” she said. “Because these families and couples faced such a practical problem that heterosexual couples never think about. What happens when your marriage is not recognized.”
So she approached Jim with the idea of telling his and John’s story — and after several years of not finding the right fit for what would become her first book, she took an immediate leave of absence from the Washington Post to work on “Love Wins.”
And as first books go, she sure picked a project that would have a strict deadline — smartly so, Debbie, Jim and their publisher Harper Collins wanted the book done in time for the one-year anniversary of the SCOTUS decision legalizing marriage equality, meaning Debbie was researching and writing a chapter a week for the better part of six months — over her Christmas holiday, she even sat on a beach with her laptop as her kids played in front of her.
Still, she’s intensely proud of the finished result — and Jim says Debbie’s knack for storytelling and personal connection made the working relationship so much easier on him.
“For a year, I’d been talking about John and our marriage. Working with Debbie on this book, there were times I cried, there were times it made me sad, but it was always tempered with a bit of joy.”
For Debbie, it was a chance to get to know John all over again.
“I did have a personal tie, but it really wasn’t that significant,” Debbie said. “I really didn’t know them very, very well. I do remember John as being full of life. When he was in the room, he sucked the air out. You just gravitated toward him, everyone described him that way. But, in a way, I got to know him better in his death.”
One of the things that really stands out for both Jim and Debbie about the way the book came together is the number of people they were able to interview for the book. One stand-out for both Debbie and Jim is Bridget Coontz, the constitutional law expert tasked by the district attorney to defend the state of Ohio against Jim and John. She says in the book — she thought about walking into the courtroom and introducing herself as, “Bridget Coontz on behalf of the wrong side of this argument.”
During the trial, she stuck to the facts — she never once argued against marriage equality, she simply argued to defend the law that had been passed by Ohio voters — that Jim and John’s marriage was not legal in Ohio and that Jim’s name could not appear on John’s death certificate.
“After that hearing, I said to people - ‘It didn’t seem like she believed what she was arguing' — I kind of intuited that from that day," Jim remembers. "So when Debbie had a chance to talk to her, that made me feel really good. It felt really good that I wasn’t off."
“I love that it gave a different flavor to this book than I think most people expected it to be.”
Another key character in “Love Wins” is Al Gerhartstein, Jim and John’s lawyer. In the 1990’s, Al spent five years (without pay) fighting Cincinnati’s city charter banning all laws that would protect the gay community from discrimination in areas including housing and employment. He lost — and it made him question the city, the courts, the application of the law — it made him question whether or not he would ever take on another gay rights case.
“I don’t know that he thought he was going to botch it, but he truly questioned the law itself, after he lost that 5 year battle for gay rights in the 1990s,” Debbie explains. "That case consumed his life. His cases consume him. But a dying man who couldn’t get an accurate death certificate? When he won the case, there was a Pride parade the next day. He rode in a convertible. It was redemption for him and for his city.”
Which brings us to the third and perhaps the most impressive character in this story — the city itself. From 1984 when Jim first moved there to today, Jim says Cincinnati has undergone a massive transformation.
“Shortly after we came out, issue 3 was passed saying no laws could be passed to protect the gay community,” Jim says. “It was painful, it was a dark time. We focused on our circle of friends, our family. John was the one who decided we would always live in the city limits of Cincinnati, he was always more optimistic than I was. But the city of Cincinnati today bears so little resemblance to what it was.”
Debbie says she was shocked by what she found when she first arrived in the city.
“I saw Cincinnati as symbolic of the way public opinion has changed. It’s the heartland. If this conservative, religious midwest town can have gay pride parades and hang flags from city buildings, anyone can do it.”
The outcry of community support for the lawsuit and the process of writing the book with Debbie has made Jim fall in love with Cincinnati all over again. In fact, it’s given him many gifts. He and Debbie have become very close — and through the process of researching his life, Debbie feels much closer to John.
Jim says the process of remembering and researching the book with Debbie — and the outcome of the lawsuit — has helped him heal.
It’s also given Jim a gift he says he didn’t even realize he wanted or needed.
A voice.
“Being a part of something bigger than I am is important to me,” he says. “It’s happened, and I find that I have to keep doing it. I can’t imagine my life now not including advocacy. It’s become a part of who I am.”
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