Gay marriage in Fargo isn’t recognised, but seven minutes away in Moorhead, Minnesota, it is. As a legal challenge plays out in court, the two cities held their annual joint gay pride parade

For the first time this year the rainbow flags set out for Fargo Moorhead’s annual gay pride parade stretched up Broadway to mark the lamp posts outside the massive Lutheran and Catholic churches facing each other across Seventh Street.

“I had some calls about that,” said Josh Boschee, Fargo’s District 44 representative and the first openly gay man to be elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives.

Homosexuality in general, and gay marriage in particular, are hot topics in North Dakota. The state does not even recognise sexuality as a category of discrimination, making it legal to fire someone for being gay or to refuse to rent a property to them. “This is a very conservative state,” said Boschee. “Things are changing, but people don’t like to talk about it.”

Soon they will have little choice. The state has until Friday to respond to a legal challenge to its decade-old constitutional ban on recognising same-sex marriage. North Dakota is the last American state to have its ban challenged, even as a dozen others have seen theirs overturned.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘This is a very conservative state,’ said Joshua Boschee. ‘Things are changing, but people don’t like to talk about it.’ Photograph: Dominic Rushe

A seven-minute drive across the Red River is Moorhead, Minnesota, where same-sex marriage has been recognised since last July after voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have banned it. The two cities have shared an annual gay pride parade for more than a decade, and residents of the region don’t really consider the two towns as separate. Many of the people attending the parade split their lives between the two states, working in one and living in the other. And for the same-sex couples living across the divide there are some serious consequences.

Fargo: a town for misfits

The 30-minute parade, held last week, is a happy affair, free of protests, as church groups, atheists, drag queens, The Jane Austen Book Club (carrying banners reading Pride without Prejudice) and a contingent from Best Buy throw out candy and rainbow bracelets to a cheering mixed crowd of parents, children and college students. A billboard reads “Fargo – A Town for Misfits”. Others read: “Fargo-Moorhead – Always Warm” somewhat unconvincingly given North Dakota’s bitter winters.

As the legal challenge plays out in North Dakota’s courts, married same-sex couples in Fargo face a heartache and worry that affects everything from healthcare and retirement planning to parenthood.

Mickey Harmon and Joy Haarstick are among seven who brought a challenge to the state’s ban in July. Harmon has worked for Fargo police for 26 years and lives in Moorhead with her partner, Joy. They were married three years ago in Sioux City, Iowa. Joy, 60, plans on retiring next year, but when she does, Harmon’s health insurance will not cover her. North Dakota doesn’t recognize their marriage exists, and the couple calculate the legal challenge they’ve filed will add $5,000-6,000 a year to their bills. And in the meantime, should anything happen to Harmon in the line of duty, Haarstick can expect nothing from North Dakota: no survivors’ benefits, no pension rights.

A level-headed woman with an easy smile, Harmon visibly bristles at what she sees as the iniquity of the situation. “I put my life on the line for this state,” she says. “And to them we don’t exist.”

It’s a decade since North Dakota passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman. That amendment, and similar measures in states across the US, came amid a backlash against gay marriage that proved popular with voters at the time. In North Dakota, the ban passed with some 74% of the vote, and the LGBT community is still feeling the sting. “I remember they [legislators] described us as ‘an abomination to God,’” said Harmon. “Wow.”

A lot has changed in intervening 10 years, sped up even more so since last June when the US supreme court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), the Clinton-era legislation that blocked federal recognition of gay marriage. Since then, state and federal courts have been flooded with legal challenges to other gay-marriage bans. Some 19 states now recognise same-sex marriage, and bans have been overturned in another 12 but are currently the subject of legal appeals. Experts believe at least one of the cases could reach the US supreme court as soon as next term.

Things move slowly in North Dakota, says Haarstick, who never expected to be at the forefront of the gay rights movement. “It feels odd doing this,” she said. “Honestly I never thought we’d have gay marriage. But now I’m a wife, I just want the same rights as anybody else.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Jane Austen Book Club walks in the gay pride parade, in downtown Fargo. Photograph: Dominic Rushe

Death and taxes

The legal divide hits taxes as well as insurance. Bernie Erickson, 51, and David Hamilton, 57, have been together for 12 years and were married eight years ago this month in Winnipeg, Canada, a three-hour drive from their home in Fargo. They live in Fargo and have four adult children together. David is an opera singer who is a professor of vocal music at Concordia College and the general director of the Fargo Moorhead Opera, and Bernie sells homes to Fargo-area families as a real estate agent.

When they got married, the idea that same-sex weddings would be common in the US seemed like a distant dream. In the US, only Massachusetts recognised same-sex unions at the time. “It was about making a public commitment to the people we loved that we are committed to each other,” said Erickson. Eight years on, Erickson said he was “a little surprised by how quickly things have moved”.

But for the couple, things have not moved far enough in North Dakota. Because he’s employed in Minnesota, Hamilton’s work health insurance policy covers them both. “David is employed in Minnesota; our marriage is not worth the paper it’s written on in North Dakota,” said Erickson. When it comes to their tax returns, the situation becomes more complicated.

The couple file one federal tax return as a married couple and a state tax return as if they are single, working out each individual’s percentage of household income, because North Dakota doesn’t recognise their union. Their last tax returns generated a $2,400 bill from their accountant, who told them it was the most complex he’d done that year. “It’s not like we are moguls,” said Hamilton.

“It’s a human rights issue. It’s really degrading that our state constitution defines our relation as substandard,” said Hamilton. “It mandates that our relationship has no legal or social recognition at all. It’s required by law that we not be recognised.”

The couple have wills drawn up in case something should happen unexpectedly to one of them but they worry that they would have no legal standing if someone wanted to be difficult and challenge them in North Dakota. “Whereas two complete strangers could walk into a courthouse and purchase a marriage license for $100 and instantly be entitled to the protection of hundreds of laws,” said Erickson. “I think that’s wrong.”

‘It feels like North Dakota wants to hold things back’

The first week after the news broke that they were part of the lawsuit attacking the constitutional ban the couple worried that their home would be vandalised. Nothing has happened. Instead all they have received is “wonderful warm support” from the people around them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Siana (right) and Stephanie Bock are in the middle of adoption proceedings. Photograph: Dominic Rushe for the Guardian

Siana and Stephanie Bock were married in Sioux City, Iowa, in March last year. Stephanie proposed on Huntington Beach in California, surprising her girlfriend with a ring placed on a starfish. The two were keen to start a family and wanted the protections marriage would afford them, but they knew, for now, that was not going to happen in North Dakota. “We knew just driving back into our state that we weren’t married to them,” said Siana.

The couple are in the middle of adoption proceedings. “A heterosexual couple would be listed as mother and father. I will be listed as a step-parent. It hurts. There is no other way to say it. I want to be known as a mother in the eyes of the law as well. I’m not saying being a step-parent is bad at all, it’s just when you are adopting you want to be the parent.”

Siana, 26, is a manager at the Alco Discount Store in Oakes, North Dakota, and Stephanie, 24, a bartender at Rudy’s in the same town. Both say most young people in the state have no issue with gay marriage but the legislature is holding on to the past.

“Ten years ago if I had been walking hand in hand with a girl, I would have been made fun of. People would have been disgusted. Now you walk around, people look but it’s: ‘Oh, there’s another one,’” said Siana.

“We just want to be like anybody else. We want to have a family. We are not looking for special rights. We just want to be equal. Just because we are the same sex doesn’t mean we should be denied that. We should be moving forward. Not going back. It feels like North Dakota wants to hold things back.”

Their lawyer Josh Newville, an attorney at Madia Law in Minneapolis, said he had been amazed by the number of people who were brave enough to take up the fight, “especially in North and South Dakota, where they have no protection, to come forward and do this.” He said the couples face a tough fight in North Dakota, and while same-sex marriage’s proponents so far have more victories than losses to their tally, he expects there will be setbacks. But Newville said history was on their side. “I cannot think of one issue in US history where the ballot box has been used so often to pass constitutional bans like this in order to terrorise a minority. It goes against the whole US philosophy of greater freedom, not less, for its people.”

For Boschee this is a problem for all of North Dakota as well as its gay residents. “These are the types of issues that put off employers and discourage the best talent from moving to North Dakota,” said Boschee. “You don’t have to be gay to find these types of dilemmas unacceptable.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I cannot think of one issue in US history where the ballot box has been used so often to pass constitutional bans like this in order to terrorise a minority,’ Newville said. Photograph: Dominic Rushe

‘The will of the people is still very much in play’

Opponents are not convinced. Tom Freier, head of the North Dakota Family Alliance Action, pointed to the overwhelming support the ban had received at the ballot box. “We do not believe that has changed. The will of the people is still very much in play,” he said. “We are just hopeful in North Dakota that our judge here will respect the will of the people.”

He said other judges who had struck down bans had imposed their own “ideological beliefs” after the supreme court decision and said that should North Dakota strike down the ban then the his organisation would push for an appeal all the way back to the supreme court.

“We don’t operate on opinion. As a Christian-based nonprofit we operate on what we believe to be the truth. That may not always manifest itself in opinions, and even legislatively sometimes, but that doesn’t change our will and our cause,” he said.

Freier said he had “love and sympathy and empathy for everyone. But what we are talking about here is equality,” he said. “What is equal to what? Today there is a definition of marriage as an institution, and if it is to be redefined, especially given the arguments that seem to carry today over equality, the very best argument for that would suggest two men could marry two men or three women,” he said. “How does that prevent a father from marrying his adult child or having three wives? We just don’t believe the argument or the rationale is strong enough to transcend what has been around for thousands of years.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jarica Jordan (right), Raven Knight (center) and a friend in downtown Fargo during the gay pride parade. Photograph: Dominic Rushe

Even in Fargo’s LGBT community, not everyone is convinced that North Dakota needs gay marriage. “I’ve never really cared about acceptance,” said drag queen Jarica Jordan. “I guess people have a right to be married and as unhappy as anyone else. Although I don’t really understand why they would want to.”

Jordan’s views were in the minority at last week’s pride. The crowd cheered as Boschee and Newville praised the stand being taken by the couples in North Dakota’s case “The world is changing,” said Newville. “And everybody who’s here is part of it.” How much it has changed will be a matter of dispute for some time to come.