The Marriage Bus Tour left from Madison Monday morning, bound for a historic court hearing that could overturn Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban.
Six of the eight couples who are plaintiffs in the case will be making the ride, with stops in Milwaukee and Racine before arriving for a Chicago rally early Monday evening. Oral arguments will be heard Tuesday in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Barbara Crabb ruled June 6 the state’s ban was unconstitutional. The state immediately filed an appeal.
“I do believe someday soon that Judge Crabb’s ruling will be the ruling of the land,” said Keith Borden, who has been married to Johannes Wallmann for seven years.
The couple wed in Vancouver, Canada, where Wallmann grew up and same-sex marriage is legal. They then spent time in California, where their marriage was legally recognized, before moving to Wisconsin two years ago for Wallmann to take a job as a music professor at UW-Madison.
They knew Wisconsin's Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage would cost them their marriage rights and are now plaintiffs in the case, Wolf v. Walker.
“We are just like other couples,” Borden said. “Our love is just like the love of other couples.”
Roughly 500 same-sex couples, 215 in Dane County, were married in Wisconsin between June 6 and June 13, at which time Crabb stayed her decision until a decision was reached in appellate court.
The Wisconsin case is among 36 court rulings in favor of the rights of same-sex plaintiffs since the June 2013 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor. That ruling found the federal definition of marriage between a man and a woman under the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, to be unconstitutional.
The ACLU is litigating the Wisconsin case and marriage-related cases in 12 other states.
Chris Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said the case was about overturning the Wisconsin law and changing public views.
Lisa Koenecke grew up in Reedsville, a small town of fewer than 2,000 people in Manitowoc County, where she said “being gay was not an option.”
A teacher at River Bluff Middle School in Stoughton who was named the 2013 Educator of the Year by the Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, Koenecke and her partner have been the victims of discrimination because of their relationship.
When Koenecke’s mother recently passed away, her father and brother were able to ban Koenecke’s partner from the funeral and other events.
Koenecke knows that kind of treatment may not change if Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban is overturned in appellate court. But she thinks sharing these stories combined with a victory in the case will begin to change opinions.
Plaintiff Virginia Wolf agreed, saying her partner has never been able to take paid time off from work to attend funerals on Wolf’s side of the family or receive paid time off when Wolf was hospitalized, rights granted by law to heterosexual couples.
“A victory will go a long way to help change family and employment laws in the state,” Ahmuty said.