It happened just a few weeks ago: Jim Obergefell was moving things in his office when he came across the ashes of his late husband, John Arthur, now 12 years gone. Arthur had last wishes for his ashes. Obergefell had yet to fulfill them.

“And it struck me that, oh, I am actually now mentally, emotionally ready to take care of John’s ashes,” Obergefell told The 19th. “It was the first time that I had that feeling so clearly and so strongly.” 

Obergefell, 58, is ready to move on. Not exactly from the love of his life or the history-making Supreme Court decision that came after Arthur died. But certainly from the insecurities straight America was grappling with a decade ago about same-sex unions. 

Obergefell is that Obergefell: the named plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit that extended marriage equality to every state in the nation in 2015. Ten years later, he celebrates that win and the many ways it rewrote his life. And in a time when LGBTQ+ rights are again under assault, he is looking to the future — of the queer rights movement and also his own. 

A journey to the Supreme Court

Obergefell’s journey to the Supreme Court was hardly destined. It began 12 years ago, on June 26, 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that prohibited the government from recognizing same-sex marriages. 

Obergefell and Arthur had been together for 21 years at the time. The two had discussed getting married before. But they wanted it to be legal, and their home state of Ohio didn’t offer same-sex marriages. 

Arthur was gravely ill with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease, and he barely left his home hospice bed. 

After the ruling, Obergefell leaned over to Arthur, hugged, then kissed him.

“Let’s get married,” he said. 

Arthur agreed. 

The logistics were not easy. Arthur was in no shape to travel, and the couple could not wed in Ohio. Obergefell researched and found that Maryland would let him get a marriage license even with only one of them present. But both would need to arrive in the state for the ceremony. 

When friends and family learned about their predicament, they pooled together money to charter a medical jet for Arthur. The two flew to Baltimore. Over the course of 45 minutes, they exchanged vows on the tarmac before flying home. 

“In the days that followed, we said the word ‘husband’ hundreds of times a day,” Obergefell said on the Decidedly Podcast in 2023. 

But just five days later, their joy was muted when civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein informed them that because of Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage, Arthur would be listed as single in death.

Arthur and Obergefell were angry. The couple sued the state of Ohio in federal district court and won. Three months later, Arthur died.

The following year, Obergefell, still in mourning, lost on appeal. But he refused to believe he might lose altogether. 

“I just kept going,” Obergefell said. “It was the right thing to do.”

On June 26, 2015, he won. For the country, the win was immensely practical. Many told Obergefell it gave them so much hope it saved their lives. For Obergefell, it meant a legacy for the man he loved. 

“I made promises to John to love, honor and protect him, and I was going to keep doing that,” he said. 

Changing history

It’s difficult to overstate the impact of Obergefell’s case on the nation or the world. Since the 2015 ruling, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates, 591,000 queer couples have wed, generating an estimated $5.9 billion in wedding spending for state and local economies. 

It has also radically transformed Obergefell’s life. Introverted and unassuming, he has spent the last decade campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights. He helms Equality Vines, a wine company that donates its proceeds to advancing civil rights causes. 

It’s a position that makes him deeply proud if not a little fatigued. 

“I’m not tired of talking about it,” he said of the 10-year anniversary of the ruling. “I’m just physically tired from all of the interviews and the photographers and the speaking gigs and the events. Yes, I’m exhausted.” 

For 12 years, Obergefell has kept Arthur alive through retelling their story countless times in courtrooms and for the media. That exercise, of telling and retelling, helped Obergefell process his profound loss. 

But he has never recoupled. It wasn’t that Arthur didn’t want him to. In fact, Arthur told him regularly that he wanted him to find love again. He asked his friends and family to tell Obergefell that he wanted him to find love after he was gone.

“I know it was sincere, because he told me that he had other people tell me that,” Obergefell said. 

It isn’t about the pressure he feels as the face of marriage equality, he said, though part of him wonders what it would be like to date after making history. 

“I don’t know how to date,” he confessed. “I’m clueless when people flirt with me, and as much as I hate it, and I don’t go into any conversation or anything like this, but you know, there’s that part of me that sometimes wonders, you know, are they interested in me as a person, or are they interested in me as Jim Obergefell, named plaintiff?”

Obergefell’s name has become synonymous with marriage equality in the United States, an issue that has not always united the LGBTQ+ community. Some queer activists have argued that same-sex marriage was a misguided goal for the movement as queer youth continue to face high rates of homelessness and transgender people grapple with police violence and incarceration, among other issues.

More work to do

Obergefell, too, is worried that the needs of the community’s most vulnerable have gone unmet. He has watched horror-struck over the last five years as state legislatures have moved to restrict transgender rights.

“We need to fight for every marginalized community, because the queer community includes every marginalized community, and equality for one is pointless without equality for all,” he said. “I didn’t go to the Supreme Court just so White, cisgender, gay men like me could get married.”

Despite all of the setbacks in LGBTQ+ rights, and even threats to Obergefell’s game-changing victory, he is hopeful — and feels stronger than ever. People assume his case was difficult for him. It was, but the path was also obvious, to him and to Arthur. They loved each other. 

“If we weren’t willing to fight for each other and for what was right, then what’s the point?”