Saturday is the 11-year wedding anniversary for more than 300 gay and lesbian couples who were married in Michigan following a landmark court decision.

The evening before, in 2014, a federal judge in Detroit ruled Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban violated equal protection and due process rights in the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman’s decision went into effect immediately, which sent hundreds of couples dashing to clergy and courthouses to get married while they could.

The first documented wedding took place at 8:05 a.m. at the Ingham County Courthouse in Mason.

“By the authority invested in me by the great state of Michigan, I pronounce you married,” declared a teary-eyed Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum to newlyweds Glenna DeJong and Marsha Caspar.

Byrum was one of four county clerks who opened their doors that Saturday to issue licenses and perform same-sex weddings. Clergy also showed up at courthouses to officiate ceremonies and some newlyweds spent their wedding day acting as witnesses for other same-sex couples.

The weddings continued as then-Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican who’d made opposition to same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his political career, went immediately to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, seeking a stay. The appeals court granted the request later that day.

That then presented a question on the status of the already-officiated marriages and rights that go along with being married.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the federal government would recognize those first same-sex marriages, while then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder tried to thread the needle, saying the marriages were legal but nevertheless not recognized by the state.

“It does create more complexity in the matter,” said Snyder, but said he arrived at the conclusion that while the marriages were legal, “there was no other option other than to say we have to suspend the benefits.”

That led to a second case against the state to have those marriages fully recognized by the state.

“The couples married on March 22 are caught in a paradox,” said Caspar. “We’re married and we’re not.”

A little more than a year later, in the summer of 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the matter when it held in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage is legal across the land.

It was a dramatic reversal in the status of marriage rights in Michigan, where voters in 2004 adopted an amendment to the state constitution that held only marriages between a man and a woman would be recognized.

Two decades later, attitudes about same-sex marriage have shifted, said pollster Richard Czuba of the Glengariff Group.

“The country was being told that if you allow same-sex marriage, marriage will collapse in this country,” he told Michigan Public Radio. “Ten years on, I don’t think anyone can credibly make the case that that has happened as a result of same-sex marriage.”

But just weeks ago, state Representative Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) and a handful of other GOP lawmakers sponsored a non-binding resolution calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell. 

“This decision has defaced the definition of marriage, undermined our God-given rights, increased persecution of Christians and confused the American family structure,” said Schriver.

The House Republican leadership dismissed the resolution as an unwelcome distraction and assigned it to a graveyard committee to languish.

But LGBTQ rights activists say they are nevertheless concerned because the dormant language of the same-sex marriage ban remains in the Michigan Constitution as well as in statute.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who was one of the lawyers to challenge the same-sex marriage ban, said she would like to see it formally repealed by voters.

“I think it has to be and the reason I say that is because I think the Obergefell decision is in real jeopardy,” said Nessel.

She said resolutions like Schriver’s are being sponsored in legislatures across the country and are designed to invite new legal challenges to same-sex marriage rights.

“We know a resolution can’t overturn a Supreme Court decision,” said Nessel, “but there can be other cases that are litigated that wind up later being argued before the United States Supreme Court, and I really believe they have a majority on that court that would overturn that decision.”

Nessel said a Supreme Court majority displayed a willingness in 2022 to topple what appears to be settled law when it reversed long-standing abortion rights protections. She noted the Obergefell decision was decided by a slim 5-to-4 majority.

A Democratic state lawmaker has sponsored a proposal to strike the language of the dormant same-sex marriage ban from the Michigan Constitution.

State Rep. Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of abortion rights protections shows the conservative majority is willing to revisit foundational decisions, including the Obergefell v. Hodges opinion that cleared the way for him to marry his partner.

“If the Supreme Court were to overturn this protection for marriage equality, it would become illegal again for any same-sex couple to get married in our state,” Morgan told Michigan Public Radio.

The same-sex marriage ban proposal was approved by Michigan voters in 2004 and stood until the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in a case that included April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse’s appeal of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that rejected their challenge of the Michigan ban. But even though the Supreme Court struck down the amendment as a violation of equal protection and due process rights, the language remains in the Michigan Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the 5-4 majority decision.

It would require two-thirds majorities in the House and the Senate to put a question on the ballot asking voters to adopt an amendment to strip the language from the Michigan Constitution. An alternative would be a petition campaign to put an amendment proposal on the statewide ballot, a path endorsed by state Senator Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield).

Morgan and Moss both said a proposed non-binding resolution by a small group of House Republicans including Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) helped make the case for removing the language.

House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp.) was not pleased with the actions of the right-wing rogue group and assigned the resolution, which would carry no legal weight, to a “graveyard” committee as a signal that will be its final destination.

A group of seven conservative GOP legislators put their names on a non-binding resolution Tuesday calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the landmark decision that struck down same-sex marriage bans — including Michigan’s dormant amendment.

Because the 2004 voter-approved amendment remains in the Constitution, it could be revived if the U.S. Supreme Court were to revisit and reverse the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, that included the Michigan case filed by plaintiffs April DeBoer and Jane Rowse, two nurses who wanted to jointly adopt special needs children.

In response to advance word of the resolution, protesters demonstrated in front of the Capitol and crowded the halls of the Anderson House Office Building, where Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) was the lead (and, as it turned out only) speaker. Other lawmakers either dropped their names from the resolutions or were no-shows at the press conference.

Schriver’s words took an apocalyptic turn as he decried the reversal of Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban.

“Ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court redefined the sacred institution of marriage,” he said. “This blunder compromised the mother-father-child family unit.”

Conservative members of the court have signaled interest in another hearing on same-sex marriage in a similar fashion to its reconsideration of the Roe v. Wade ruling that determined abortion rights were constitutionally protected.

Justice Samuel Alito last year renewed his criticism of the same-sex marriage decision. Alito along with Justices John Roberts and Clarence Thomas dissented in the decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

State Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield), a gay man who sponsored the bill to add LGBTQ protections to Michigan’s main civil rights law, crashed the news conference to offer a rebuttal.

“This was just as buffoonish as I expected it to be,” he said. “I think that this has fallen flat with people in the State of Michigan. I think that people respect their LGBTQ neighbors, their LGBTQ family members. These marriages have been the law of the land for 10 years. They contribute to family security. They contribute to economic security.”

Schriver didn’t get much support from his own caucus either. Not only did his co-sponsors drop out, House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township), on short notice, convened his own news conference to compete with Schriver’s event. Hall assigned the bill to the House Government Operations Committee, which often serves as a graveyard for disfavored legislation, and messaged that it would remain parked there.

Rep. Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) said he would eventually like to see the question settled by formally repealing dormant same-sex marriage ban in Michigan, which would require voter approval to amend the Michigan Constitution.

“I’m not sure if the moment’s here yet or not,” he told the Michigan Public Radio Network, “but I think we’re getting to that moment where we’re ready, where we have to, as we inch closer and closer to the potential of the Supreme Court rolling back our right to marriage equality.”