Gay marriage: TN plaintiffs proud of court's decision

One-year-old Emilia will never know any different, her mom said.

She will grow up knowing her moms — the two women whose names are on her birth certificate — are legal equals to the parents of her classmates and friends.

The thought brought tears to Valeria Tanco's eyes Friday morning as she watched her daughter playing with a purple crepe myrtle flower, unaware of the history taking place around her.

For 20 months, Tanco and her wife, Sophy Jesty, have been in a battle asking Tennessee and the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize their New York marriage.

In one minute on Friday they learned through 22 words on a live blog that the nation's highest court had changed their lives, those of their family members and people in the gay community across the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could not ban same-sex marriage or refuse to recognize marriages legal in other states. The merged case, brought by Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan, has been heralded as a landmark civil rights decision.

Supporters felt elated. Overwhelmed. Equal.

Opponents felt disappointed. Silenced. Overruled.

The ruling was swiftly put into place in the Volunteer State. Gov. Bill Haslam and Attorney General Herbert Slatery quickly said the state would not try and block the marriages, giving clerks the green light. Supporters praised them for their quick action.

"I'm so proud to be a Tennessean," said Regina Lambert, a Knoxville attorney who has worked with Jesty and Tanco since the case began in 2013. "I'm just so proud that Tennessee is going to handle this in a way that expedites the rights of their citizens."

Gay marriages begin

Within about 90 minutes, county clerks were given a green light to issue new licenses, ones that no longer said bride and groom but Applicant 1 and Applicant 2.

Within four hours of the court's decision, Nashville at-large councilwoman and mayoral candidate Megan Barry officiated the first wedding in Davidson County Clerk Brenda Wynn's office. Twenty-four same-sex marriages were licensed in Nashville on Friday, Wynn said.

More than half of Tennessee's 95 counties issued licenses the day of the ruling, according to Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project.

Slatery, who said he was disappointed in the ruling, advised county clerks to follow the court's decision. Some clerks said they would issue licenses, but stop officiating all marriages.

"However, our best advice in these instances is pretty simple: do not discriminate," Slatery said at an afternoon news conference. "That's the holding of the court today."

The rights of citizens — and concerns that the court trampled on those — was a point of contention for opponents.

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The right of states to make their own laws was a key point in Tennessee's case in opposition to gay marriage when argued before the Supreme Court in April. That was the basis for several of the dissenting justices.

In 2006, Tennessee voters supported the state's definition of marriage as one man and one woman. That law is now void.

"Today a handful of Americans on the court have stripped the people of the freedom to democratically address the meaning and role of society's most fundamental institution, marriage," said David Fowler, president of the Franklin-based Family Action Council of Tennessee.

He said the justices "arrogantly" said they are smarter than "millions of human beings over thousands of years across the entire globe" who have used a traditional definition of marriage.

No more patchwork

The gay couples named in Tennessee's part of the case — Jesty and Tanco, Ijpe DeKoe and Thom Kostura, and Matthew Mansell and Johno Espejo — all married in other states. They were asked to be part of this case in 2013.

DeKoe and Kostura lived in Memphis at the time, but earlier this month moved to Fort Dix, N.J. DeKoe is a U.S. Army reservist working full time.

"The Army moved us, which is part of the reason why this case is so important," DeKoe said. "For occupation or otherwise, people move across the country."

He said the court ruling eliminates a patchwork of laws that discriminate from state-to-state. It means gay couples will have the same legal protections to make decisions for their spouses.

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The first call DeKoe and Kostura made after learning of the decision was to their friends, another gay couple they knew in Memphis. DeKoe recalled seeing refinancing paperwork at the couple's house that listed one of the men as a single person. It was a "small insult" to the couple that had been married 10 years and together for 17, DeKoe said.

"Their paperwork says they're essentially legal strangers," DeKoe said. "They're already calling the clerk's office and trying to get the paperwork changed."

Jesty and Tanco married in New York in 2011 and shortly later found work at the University of Tennessee's College of Veterinary Medicine. Tanco soon became pregnant using a donor.

The night before she had Emilia in 2014, Tanco felt a tingling in her hands. She knew her daughter would be born the next day.

Thursday night, the tingling returned.

During a telephone interview with The Tennessean on Friday, the couple recounted the day's events.

In closet-sized room at the veterinary college, they watched SCOTUSblog on their attorney's iPad. Colleagues gathered.

RELATED: Read the court's opinion.

Within a minute, the blog's authors had posted: "Holding: Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex."

There were cheers. Tears of elation. People spilled out into the hallway.

Jesty, Tanco and Lambert squished a fussing Emilia into the center of a hug. Then came the chaos.

Their phones rang and they called family. They did an interview with NPR's "All Things Considered," and set up an appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday. They gave a news conference at UT's Law School, where above the doors is inscribed: "Equal justice under law."

They hoped to take a break Friday to sit in the yard of their century-old Knoxville home, and "just think about this amazing day," Jesty said.

And they will think about Emilia, and the two-year personal battle they've fought on a national stage for her.

"She will be growing up in a nation where she doesn't know any different," Tanco said.

Staff writer Dave Boucher contributed to this report. Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 or on Twitter @sbarchenger.



