Anti-LGBT legislation ‘designed to undermine’ has proliferated since Obergefell v Hodges, but for one Alabama couple there’s a semblance of normalcy

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The newlyweds are a year out.



More than a million LGBT Americans have exchanged vows since this day a year ago, when the US supreme court ruled that same-sex marriage is a legal right in a decision that threw open the doors of courthouses across the country.

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“That means tens of millions affected,” said Evan Wolfson, who founded Freedom to Marry, a leading campaign for marriage equality. “Family members, friends, loved ones. That’s a lot of happiness.”

The supreme court’s ruling in Obergefell v Hodges came after several months of decisions at local levels, then reversals, then reversals of reversals, creating nationwide disorder. In some places, people were married in their home state, but not while they traveled for vacation. Or in other places, marriage licenses were granted for a while then withheld again, so that some couples could marry but their friends couldn’t.



One of the last places to hold out in the back-and-forth was Mobile, Alabama. The first gay couple to wed there, last year, was Robert Povilat and Milton Persinger.

“We’re still going strong,” Povilat said recently. “We made the vow as a lifetime commitment, and we are holding to that.”

Their story is probably common among people who live far from cities where same-sex marriage had been accepted well before the supreme court’s ruling.

“Very rural,” Povilat said.

He lived in Fort Payne, Alabama, and Persinger lived about a half hour away in Gadsden. In 2012 they met online, and chatted for weeks before meeting.

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Both had lost partners: Povilat to liver disease, Persinger to a heart attack. Povilat was 58, Persinger 44. Both wanted something stable. “More than just a one-night stand,” Povilat said.

Six months later they knew they wanted to marry, but couldn’t. Alabama wouldn’t allow it. So when the window opened at the Mobile courthouse and offered marriage licenses to gay couples for the first time, Povilat and Persinger were the first in line.

After years of denial, the world seemed to drape itself in a rainbow flag.

“It was on the front page of the newspaper,” Povilat said. “We came home, and the people in our neighborhood had put a copy of the newspaper and flowers and a bottle of champagne on our front porch.”

Facebook profiles went rainbow-hued. International brands tripped over themselves to congratulate the LGBT community. The White House itself was lit with rainbow lights. It was a honeymoon.

And largely, Povilat said, the goodwill has held out, even in one of the last states to legally acknowledge their relationship. “I’ve not had a single negative comment, actually,” he said.

Not that life has been easy. Persinger has suffered health problems, and the couple has struggled through financial straits. “It’s not perfect. But we’re holding on.”

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The same is true of the state of equality across the nation. Over the past year a raft of anti-LGBT legislation has come up in numerous states. Some have come in the form of religious freedom bills, designed to allow government clerks and other officials to deny services to gay people. Others have come as bathroom-related legislation, aimed at regulating which bathrooms transgender people may use.

Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, said those sorts of reactions are in a way a sign of key advancements.

“They’re designed to undermine,” he said. “And they have to undermine, because they can’t directly attack the law. Marriage equality is law. We’ve won.”

Wolfson, now a law professor at Georgetown University, said the legality of same-sex marriage may now be unassailable, but that there is still work for activists to do.

On Friday, for instance, Aaron Sarver of the Campaign for Southern Equality said: “We were in federal court all day for our legal challenge to HB 1523 in Mississippi.”

The bill is called the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act and is vast in its scope. Among many other things, it would give business owners the right to deny services to LGBT people; additionally, it would allow court clerks to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, or social workers to deny adoptions by couples they believe may be engaging in premarital sex.

But beyond that, Wolfson said, there is the question of international LGBT rights.

Throughout the first year of gay marriage in the US, he said, people in other countries have called for advice on starting their own equality campaigns.

“The opportunities are many,” he said. “All over the world.”

