Laura Lenz-Perkins (left) and her partner Shari Henning tied the knot Jan. 1 in an outdoor ceremony at Olin Park.
The morning after the Nov. 8 election, Laura Lenz-Perkins’ 11-year-old daughter burst into tears when she learned that Donald Trump had won the presidency.
“The first question she asked was if [my partner and I] would still be able to get married next summer if he was president,” Lenz-Perkins says. “It was that moment that we decided that getting married before he was inaugurated was something we needed to do.”
Lenz-Perkins and her partner, Shari Henning, who live in Madison, tied the knot Jan. 7 in an outdoor ceremony at Olin Park. It was minus 5 degrees with the wind chill, but family and friends huddled together with coffee and hot chocolate in hand as the couple pledged their commitment. “It was loving and warm despite the temperatures,” Lenz-Perkins says. “And surely a wedding that no one will forget.”
Since Trump’s election, same-sex couples all over the country have been rushing to get married, fearing that the president and his far-right administration might curtail rights for LGBT individuals. The trend has made its way to Madison, with Dane County issuing 213 marriage licenses in December — nearly 50 percent more than the same month in 2015, according to records obtained by Isthmus. The county does not keep a separate tally of same-sex marriages, but based on the names listed on the documents, it appears that many of the couples are LGBT.
Theresa Roetter, a Madison attorney who specializes in LGBT family law, says she’s seen a “definite uptick” since the November election in people contacting her with concerns about how the Trump administration will affect their rights. “People aren’t necessarily fearful,” Roetter says. “I think people are just being careful.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. Trump has said he’s “fine” with the court’s ruling, but many remain worried that he could be convinced to change his position. Vice President Mike Pence is notorious for his hardline conservative stance on same-sex marriage, and is so reviled by the LGBT community that activists threw a “queer dance party” outside his Washington, D.C., home to protest the inauguration.
Overturning the Supreme Court decision would be “quite a process,” Roetter says. “The president doesn’t have the power to undo a Supreme Court decision.” Reversal would require that a lawsuit move through several lower courts, then the Supreme Court would have to undo its own decision. “Could that possibly happen?” Roetter says. “Of course. Anything can happen.”
Besides marrying, many LGBT families are also taking steps to “secure relationships” with their children through adoption, which is a stronger and more binding arrangement than legal guardianship, Roetter says. But there’s good news on that front: Rights for same-sex couples had a big win in March 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that denied parental rights to a lesbian adoptive mother who had split with her partner. The justices issued the ruling without even hearing an oral argument, a sign that the legal precedent is secure.
Rachel Damiano and her partner, Nicole, were planning an April wedding, but after Trump won they opted to get married at the Milwaukee County courthouse on Dec. 21 in the presence of family and close friends. They’re still planning to have a big party on their original date, but wanted to “take care of the legal part” sooner rather than later. “It feels like we have a little more power this way,” Damiano says. She initially worried that moving the wedding date up would somehow make the April celebration less special, but now she says she’s glad to have had the experience.
“It kind of sucks that it had to be a political event, but I am a political body just being a lesbian,” she says. “I don’t have the privilege of choosing whether I’m political or not.”
