DETROIT – Mason residents Lee Chaney and Dawn Chapel have been together nine years. They always have considered themselves married, but on Wednesday, they hoped the state of Michigan also would recognize their bond.
Unfortunately, they’ll have to wait a little bit longer.
“We were completely devastated,” Chaney said. “We really felt that we were finally going to get the same freedom as everybody else and the same rights and (be) allowed to marry the person that we love.”
And they aren’t the only ones waiting. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who are suing the state of Michigan for the right to marry and adopt one another’s children, didn’t receive the decision they were hoping for in Detroit on Wednesday afternoon.
In fact, they didn’t receive a decision at all.
Michigan’s constitutional ban on gay marriage will stand, as Judge Bernard Friedman denied both the plantiffs’ and defendant’s motions for summary judgement at a hearing in federal court.
Citing factual issues, Friedman set a trial date for Feb. 25.
Friedman will issue a written opinion, but said he agreed with both sides.
Michigan Assistant Attorney General Kristin Heyse spoke first for the defense, saying the decision should be left to Michigan voters, who have decided married parents of both sexes is the ideal model for raising children.
“Disagreement from the plaintiffs does not make the amendment or adoption code irrational or unconstitutional,” Heyse said.
“Democracy is great, you just can’t persecute people,” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Carole Stanyar, said in her counterargument.
Stanyar also challenged the “ideal model.”
“This is irrational because no other adult parent in Michigan is subject to a competency test,” she said. “The law makes it difficult for children to understand the integrity of their own families.”
As arguments were heard in Detroit, Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum’s office was ready to prepare marriage licenses. She said 13 couples had contacted her about marriage.
“I think people are ready for Michigan to accept all people,” Byrum said. “All loving people should have the opportunity to marry.”
Byrum was willing to issue the licenses despite an order sent earlier that day from Michigan Deputy Chief Attorney General Carol Isaacs, ordering clerks not to issue licenses to same-sex couples.
“The short answer is that until the matter reaches the final disposition on appeal from any adverse order, you are forbidden by Michigan law from issuing a marriage license to same-sex couples during the pendency of the appeal,” Isaac said in a statement.
Although, Isaac conceded at the letter’s conclusion, the government was bound to follow the eventual ruling.
“When the decision is final, and all arguments are finished, all the citizens of the state will be bound to follow the decision, whatever its outcome,” Isaacs said.
Deanna Hurlbert, director of MSU’s LBGT Resource Center, said all students in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community have a stake in the ruling’s potentially far-reaching effects.
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“Anyone would like the future potential of having their relationship … And their family acknowledged in the eyes of the law and the state has something to gain,” Hurlbert said.
Hurlbert said the delay in ruling on the ban has left families in limbo.
“The validity of their families is being put into the hands of others,” Hurlbert said. “People are waiting to have their humanity validated, legally. And that’s not insignificant.”
