Walkup's attempt to change his name on his driver's license, for instance, was turned down even when he had what he thought was a valid D.C. "It feels different - it feels like you're married now."Įven if the District of Columbia had certified their marriage, Reed and Walkup understood that Texas authorities would not have recognized it. "We met with our family and friends and had them participate in our commitments to each other," Walkup said of the event. Licensed to marry people in Washington, she appeared on a large screen in front of Reed and Walkup on October 10, guiding them through the ceremony and helping process their paperwork via the video conferencing program Skype. Some, like Iowa, strictly delineated that all parties had to be in the state for the ceremony and marriage certification.īut they were intent on marrying in Texas and felt that the language in Washington's statute was more flexible. Over the next few months, the couple began researching laws in the five states and Washington that allowed same-sex marriage. I said he was my husband, and I wanted to see him immediately." "The very first question I was asked was, what was my relationship to him?" Walkup recall. Walkup rushed to the emergency room to be with his longtime partner. The two men began talking about marriage about a year and a half ago, after Reed got in a car accident and landed in the hospital. Describing themselves as "accidental activists," Reed and Walkup now find themselves part of the new legal tangle. Though video conferencing allows people to interact in new ways, such technology raises tricky questions about what it means to be present in a legal sense. "Both the officiant and the parties to the marriage must be physically present at the ceremony performed in the district." "Marriage statutes in the District of Columbia (dating back to 1901) requires marriages to be celebrated within the jurisdictional and territorial boundaries of the city," Marie Robertson, a spokeswoman for the D.C.
Reed was outraged, presuming the letter was "motivated by homophobia, politics or both," he said.īut the court said its notice had nothing to do with the gender of the men and everything to do with the location of their ceremony. Superior Court informing them that their marriage wasn't official after all. The men thought it worked until the day after Thanksgiving, about seven weeks after the online ceremony, when they received a letter from the D.C. where gay marriage is legal - witness and certify their union from 1,200 miles away via live online video. So instead, the couple had an officiant who is licensed in Washington, D.C. But there was a stumbling block: Same-sex marriage isn't legal in the Lone Star State. (CNN) - Mark Reed and Dante Walkup wanted to marry in their home state of Texas, surrounded by family and friends.
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