- The Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide 7 years ago.
- Now, Jim Obergefell — the man for which that case was named — is running for Ohio state House.
- Insider spoke with him in his hometown of Sandusky about the campaign and his perspective on LGBTQ issues.
SANDUSKY, Ohio — As a crowd of roughly a hundred people milled about on a cold Thursday morning awaiting the arrival of US Senate candidate Tim Ryan in his bright-red campaign bus, a bald, bespectacled man was busy chatting people up.
"I'm looking forward to November 8th getting here," the man could be heard saying to a handful of attendees. "But you know, the nice thing is, everything I went through with the court case — a lot of that really prepared me for something like this."
The "court case" in question was Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 civil rights case in which the Supreme Court ruled five to four that same-sex couples were guaranteed the right to marry.
And the man for which the case was named, Jim Obergefell, was at the Sandusky event in his capacity as the Democratic nominee in Ohio House District 89, a Republican-held seat in northern Ohio.
"I think a lot of us hear when we're growing up, you know, 'one person, a couple people can change the world,'" Obergefell told Insider during an interview at a local coffee shop the day before the Ryan event. "And I think most of us were like, 'whatever, that's just a saying.'"
"I lived it," he said after a brief pause. "And I have to keep being part of making things better."
If elected, Obergefell would be the only openly gay member of the state House and just the third openly LGBTQ legislator in state history. But he says he's not deterred by that reality, suggesting a more advocate-like role for himself in the legislature.
"Someone has to do it. I mean, our government is dysfunctional. Ohio is dysfunctional," said Obergefell. "Someone has to be there as a voice of common sense, a voice of human decency, and a voice who won't be afraid to say, 'this is wrong, this is harming people.'"
A household name in the race
In July 2013, Obergefell and his late husband, John Arthur, initiated a lawsuit in a federal district court against the state of Ohio demanding recognition of a marriage performed in Maryland just days earlier. Arthur, who was Obergefell's partner of 20 years, was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and would die just three months later. Under Ohio law at the time, his death certificate would have listed him as unmarried.
As the case made its way towards the nation's highest court, it was consolidated with other similar cases across a handful of other states. Because Obergefell's case had the lowest case number, his name would go on to become synonymous with marriage equality.
Today, the defendant in the case — then-Ohio Secretary of Health Richard Hodges — counts himself as a friend of Obergefell's and a supporter of his campaign.
"I wasn't an enthusiastic proponent of the law," Hodges, himself a former Republican state legislator, told Insider in a phone interview, referring to Ohio's ban on same-sex marriage. "I understood the equal protection consequences in what the court was going to be looking at, and was sympathetic."
Much has changed for Obergefell in the last nine years, as circumstances and fateful choices transformed a Cincinnati real estate broker and IT professional into what Hodges calls a "civil rights rock-star."
Today, Obergefell is trying out the role of politician, knocking doors in his hometown on the coast of Lake Erie and often engaging with voters about more basic economic concerns.
And he's doing so at a time when marriage equality is once again the subject of federal debate and states adopt legislation seen as targeting LGBTQ people. Obergefell's opponent, Republican state representative DJ Swearingen, is the chief co-sponsor of a bill that echoes Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act — commonly known as the "Don't Say Gay" law. That effort has prompted denunciation from the local paper's editorial board.
"Those things don't create jobs," said Obergefell. "They don't protect our environment, they don't make sure Lake Erie is clean, and healthy, and protected going forward. It doesn't make sure that health care, affordable, quality health care is available to everyone. It doesn't do anything to protect families, or to respect families."
'At least think about it'
Obergefell says he was first approached about running for office just days after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling when Brian Sims, a gay Democratic state legislator from Pennsylvania, told him to consider it.
"Jim, people are going to start mentioning public service to you," Obergefell recounted Sims telling him. "He said, 'do me a favor: don't just say no, don't just brush it off, at least think about it.'"
But Obergefell was still mourning the loss of his husband John, who died in October 2013. In 2016, he made the decision to move from his long-time home in Cincinnati to Washington, DC, embracing his new-found role as a political activist and hoping for a fresh start.
"There were just too many ghosts. Everywhere I went, I saw John," he said.
Obergefell threw himself into a variety of new ventures that included co-founding a wine company that supports LGBTQ rights and other progressive causes, co-authoring a book about the landmark Supreme Court case, serving on the board of an organization that advocates for LGBTQ elders, and working for Family Equality, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ families. He also became a public speaker, appearing regularly at universities and in corporate settings.
He later moved back to Ohio in 2019, initially settling in Columbus because — having spent three years in DC — he wanted to live in a place with a large, active queer community. But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting isolation led him to re-evaluate his life once more, and he moved back to his hometown of Sandusky in June 2021.
"I mean, all five of my siblings are still in the area, most of my nieces and nephews," he said. "There's something really, really joyful about still being in touch with, going out with, people I've known since the age of three."
When Chris Redfern — the last Democrat to hold the Sandusky-area district and a former state party chair — asked Obergefell to run, he accepted, formally launching his campaign in January 2022.
And the fact that this is Obergefell's hometown is immediately apparent; his campaign treasurer, Judi Nath, told Insider at the Ryan event that she's known Obergefell since they were both 12 years old.
'Someone has to do it'
Knocking doors on a near-daily basis across the district, Obergefell says he's been encouraged by the reception he's gotten in his Rust Belt district and has yet to have a negative experience at someone's doorstep. He also benefits from an unusually high degree of name recognition for a state legislative candidate, owing to the national attention he's received and his presence as a notable local figure.
"It isn't unusual for people to say, 'I know who you are, and I'm voting for you,'" he said.
He attended Sandusky's first Pride parade in 2018 while still living in DC, and was presented with keys to the city at last year's celebration. Local organizers have even taken to calling Sandusky the "birthplace of marriage equality."
"I don't start with it, and I don't focus on it," he said of his association with the 2015 Supreme Court case. "I will mention it, just as part of expressing what my values are."
Obergefell said he's encouraged by not just the social changes he's seen in Sandusky, but by positive signs of economic revitalization. Downtown, buildings have been recently reconstructed and trendy restaurants and bars can be found on most blocks.
"The city is, in my mind, finally embracing the lake," he said. "That really is a big driver of our economy, because of tourism and recreation."
Obergefell appears to stand a decent chance of making it into office. Though Republicans have held the seat since 2014, the first-time candidate has significantly outraised his Republican opponent in 2022, according the campaign finance tracking website Follow The Money. But even if he wins, he's likely to have diminished power as a lawmaker, since partisan control of the chamber is expected to remain in Republican hands.
Generally soft-spoken, Obergefell becomes particularly animated when talking about the threats he sees against LGBTQ people, especially transgender people. The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the constitutional right to an abortion, he says, has put a "target on the back of marriage equality."
And while he says he's "hopeful" that the Senate will codify same-sex marriage into law, he warns against deriving any comfort from the fact that Republicans generally express disinterest in revoking marriage equality, as Insider reported earlier this year.
"They're just waiting to see which way the winds blow," he said. "And if they see a benefit in the future of jumping on the bandwagon of, 'yeah, this should be overturned,' what's going to stop them from doing that?"
'I want to find love again'
Obergefell says he's given little thought to what might be next if he loses, an outcome very much in the realm of possibility.
"Good question!" he exclaimed after a lengthy pause. He suggested he could return to the nonprofit world, saying he had a "great experience" working for Family Equality. "But who knows, maybe some other opportunity will present itself and I'll think, 'oh, maybe I should do this now!'"
That spontaneous, see-what-comes-next approach is largely how Obergefell has lived his life over the course of the last decade. But personally, he's continued to mourn the loss of his late husband, the 9 year anniversary of which passed in October. He says that both grieving and a busy travel schedule have prevented him from getting back into dating.
"John is still so present in my mind, in my heart," said Obergefell. "That lawsuit happened because I love John. He was dying. We wanted to exist. We wanted to matter. We wanted to be seen by our government."
Obergefell noted that as he was bed-ridden and in need of around-the-clock care in the final months of his life, Arthur would frequently tell him that he wanted him to find love after he had passed. But he says that he may now be ready, and that he found some closure in a ceremony celebrating the opening of John Arthur Flats, an LGBTQ-friendly senior housing facility in Cincinnati named after his late husband.
"A lot of people lose a loved one, and not many of them have that loved one's name on something like that," he said. "Very, very few of them have a Supreme Court case that happened because of that relationship."
"So I feel really lucky that I have that," he added.
