Crackdown on Pride is part of effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly-contested election next year
Tens of thousands march against Hungary’s government for LGBT rights – video
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”.
Jubilant crowds packed into the city’s streets on Saturday, waving Pride flags and signs that mocked the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as their peaceful procession inched forward at a snail’s pace.
Organisers estimated that a record number of people turned up, far outstripping the expected turnout of 35,000-40,000 people.
“We believe there are 180,000 to 200,000 people attending,” the president of Pride, Viktória Radványi told AFP. “It is hard to estimate because there have never been so many people at Budapest Pride.”
The mass demonstration against the government was a bittersweet marking of Budapest Pride’s 30th anniversary; while the turnout on Saturday was expected to reach record levels, it had come after the government had doubled down on its targeting of the country’s LGBTQ+ community.
Hungary Pride participants in the march cross the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Rudolf Karancsi/AP
“We came because they tried to ban it,” said Timi, 49. The Hungarian national was marching with her daughter, Zsófi, 23, who had travelled from her home in Barcelona to join the rally.
After the ruling Fidesz party, led by the rightwing populist Orbán, fast-tracked a law that made it an offence to hold or attend events that involve the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors, many Hungarians vowed to show their disapproval by attending Pride for the first time.
Viki Márton was among those who had made good on the promise, turning up with her nine-year-old daughter.
The pair had come equipped with hats, water spray, and a swimsuit, more worried about heat than rightwing protesters. “I want her to see the reality,” said Márton. “And I’m so excited to be here!”
Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets on Saturday, despite Orbán’s warning on Friday that those who attend or organise the march will face ‘legal consequences’. Photograph: János Kummer/Getty Images
Earlier this month, police announced they would follow the government’s orders and ban the march. The progressive mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, was swift to respond, saying that the march would instead go ahead as a separate municipal event, with Karácsony describing it as a way to circumvent the need for official authorisation.
On Saturday, the mayor reiterated why the city had decided to host the event, hinting at how the march had become a symbol of discontent against a government that has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law.
“The government is always fighting against an enemy against which they have to protect Hungarian people,” said Karácsony.
“This time, it is sexual minorities that are the target … we believe there should be no first and second class citizens, so we decided to stand by this event.”
Akos Horvath, 18, who had travelled two hours from his city in southern Hungary to take part in the march, described it as an event of “symbolic importance”.
Speaking to news agency AFP, he added: “It’s not just about representing gay people, but about standing up for the rights of the Hungarian people.”
The sentiment was echoed by fellow marcher Eszter Rein-Bódi. “This is about much more, not just about homosexuality,” Rein-Bódi told Reuters “This is the last moment to stand up for our rights.”
‘This is about much more, not just about homosexuality,’ one participant told Reuters. Photograph: Lisa Leutner/Reuters
Tens of thousands of Hungarians, including senior citizens and parents with their children, plus politicians and campaigners from 30 countries, took to the streets on Saturday, despite Orbán’s warning on Friday that those who attend or organise the march will face “legal consequences”.
The Hungarian prime minister sought to minimise concerns over violence, however, saying that Hungary was a “civilised country” and police would not “break it up … It cannot reach the level of physical abuse”.
Still, in a video posted to social media this week, the country’s justice minister, Bence Tuzson, warned the Budapest mayor that organising a banned event or encouraging people to attend is punishable by up to a year in prison.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, the mayor brushed off the threat and downplayed concerns that police would later impose heavy fines on attende s. “Police have only one task tomorrow: to guarantee the safety and security of those gathered at the event,” said Karácsony.
The potential for violence had been amplified after three groups with ties to the extreme right said they were planning counter-marches. As the Pride march got under way, local news site Telex reported that the route of the march had to be changed after one of these groups blocked off a bridge.
Analysts had described the government’s bid to crackdown on Pride as part of a wider effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly contested national election next year.
Orbán is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz party’s elite, Péter Magyar, leading Pride organisers to suggest they are being scapegoated as Orbán scrambles to shore up support among conservative voters.
Orbán’s government had also prompted concerns across Hungary and beyond after it said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events, potentially fining them up to €500 (£425).
Ahead of the march, as campaigners scrambled for clarity on whether or how this technology would be used, AFP reported that newly installed cameras had appeared on the lamp-posts that dotted the planned route.
The threat had been enough to rattle some. Elton, 30, a Brazilian living in Hungary wore a hat and sunglasses as he took part on Saturday, explaining that he had been worried about jeopardising his job and immigration status, but that his Hungarian boyfriend had persuaded him to attend.
“This is my second time at Pride, but the first time I feel insecure about it,” he said.
Orbán’s government had also prompted concerns across Hungary and beyond after it said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events. Photograph: Lisa Leutner/Reuters
Mici, a 21-year-old Budapest resident, said she had attended Pride marches in the past but this time had weighed whether to join in after she was spooked by reports of the facial recognition system.
“At first, I was scared to come out because of the news, but I feel safe with so many people.”
She hoped that the massive turnout for the march would be enough to push the Orbán government to change its stance.
“I think the crowd that has come from across Europe, the record numbers, will make Hungarian people see that this cause is well-supported.”
BREAKING: The three liberal Supreme Court justices release a scathing dissent after the Republican-controlled judges issue an anti-LGBTQ ruling that “ushers in a new reality” that will deny children the “opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.”
This is only the third time that Sonia Sotomayor has read her dissent from the bench, indicating strong disapproval…
“Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, supported by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The ruling was made in favor of a group of parents who want to opt their children out of elementary school lessons that include LGBTQ storybooks. The case will now go back to a lower court for final decision on whether schools must provide such an opt-out option.
Thanks to the Republican justices, school districts must now inform parents in advance of the books being read in class and allow them to pull their children if they choose. For underfunded schools, this additional burden will be too much to bear. It adds administrative costs and distracts teachers who are already struggling to teach overcrowded classrooms. Taken in tandem with the Trump administration’s efforts to completely eliminate the Department of Education, it’s a grim omen of things to come.
Crucially, the decision is a blatant handout to the religious radicals who helped put Donald Trump in power, which in turn tilted the court even more conservative. Such people want to pretend that LGBTQ people don’t even exist.
“Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parent’s religious beliefs. If that is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny, then little is not,” Sotomayor continued.
She predicted that the decision will cause “chaos for this Nation’s public schools.”
“Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she continued. “The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students’ learning and development.”
“Worse yet, the majority closes its eyes to the inevitable chilling effects of its ruling,” she went on. “Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences. Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections.”
“The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards,” she added. “Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.”
Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida. | Screenshot: Google Maps
A church in Florida has sent the local sheriff’s office an invoice after law enforcement officials parked their vehicles in its parking lot against the pastor’s wishes as they sought to carry out an unspecified investigation.
Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, posted a photograph to Facebook on June 17 showing an invoice addressed to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. The invoice requests a payment of $10,000 for “unauthorized use of [the] private church parking lot beginning at 6:00 AM.”
The invoice maintained that the presence of “13 vehicles occupying 17 parking spots” resulted in a “disruption to community access, operations, and congregational use of property.”
The document stressed that “continued use without coordination or consent may result in legal action or additional penalties,” vowing that the church will use payment received from the law enforcement agency to pay for “legal services for immigrants.”
Andy Oliver, the pastor of Allendale, who has been outspoken in his advocacy against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, posted a video to Facebook on June 17 documenting the presence of law enforcement vehicles in the church parking lot.
The video shows Oliver asking law enforcement officials if he could help them. One of them responded by telling Oliver, “We’re just waiting for an operation.”
“Is this involving ICE?” Oliver asked. Multiple law enforcement officials denied that the operation in question involved ICE but declined to provide further details other than stating, “It’s a Sheriff’s Office investigation.” After the official informed Oliver that the investigation did not involve anything on his property, the pastor asked the law enforcement officials to leave: “I don’t want policing to be staged here. Definitely, ICE is not welcome here.”
The officers agreed to leave, and a subsequent video posted to Facebook shows a dozen vehicles, both marked and unmarked, exiting the property.
Oliver’s Facebook page makes the dislike of ICE at his church clear. The cover photo features an image of the church taken at night with the words “Abolish ICE” displayed on the side of the building.
The most recent public post on Oliver’s Facebook page links to a TikTok video showing the pastor speaking at an anti-ICE protest outside the Pinellas County Jail while wearing an “Abolish ICE” shirt on June 14, three days before law enforcement officials showed up on his property.
During his remarks, Oliver denounced ICE as a “weapon” that is “soaked in white supremacy.”
“It is the child of manifest destiny and Jim Crow, the bastard cousin of slave patrols and Indian removal,” he added. “ICE is the cold breath of empire whispering ‘You don’t belong.'”
Oliver referred to the Bible as he attempted to make the case against ICE.
“Jesus fled to Egypt as a refugee. Jesus knew what it meant to hear soldiers marching with orders signed in the blood of empire and Jesus, he was executed by the state, hung between thieves as a warning to the masses. His death was legal.”
“So, don’t you dare tell me that the Gospel is neutral. Don’t you dare sanitize the cross while ICE cages children under fluorescent lights. I believe in resurrection, but too many are still hanging on crosses of barbed wire borders, prison buses, ankle monitors and courtroom numbers that decide who gets to stay and who gets disappeared. ICE disappears people. And if your theology doesn’t scream for abolition, then your theology is frozen,” he proclaimed.
Oliver shared his belief that “this nation has built its wealth on stolen land and stolen labor, and ICE is just the newest name for the oldest sin.” He described ICE as “white supremacy in a windbreaker, colonialism with a clipboard” and “hatred with a hollowed-out smile.”
“Our God does not deport, our God delivers,” he said. “Our God does not separate families, our God sets captives free.”
“ICE is sin, borders are a lie, cages are the devil’s architecture and silence is complicity. We won’t be silent. We won’t be complicit. We won’t stop until every child is reunited, every detainee is released and every system built on hate melts into history,” he vowed.
Oliver’s advocacy against ICE is not the only example of the pastor’s progressive activism.
In 2023, after the Florida Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement African-American Studies course over concerns it promoted critical theory, Oliver offered the class at his church.
Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump and his administration have ramped up enforcement of immigration law, which has seen waves of ICE raids seeking to detain immigrants who are in the U.S illegally.
While some have defended the measure as a bid to enforce the country’s immigration laws, as millions of immigrants are in the country illegally, some Christian leaders have voiced their displeasure with church properties being used in immigration raids.
In a January directive, the Trump administration rescinded the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s policy limiting the deportation of illegal immigrants in so-called “sensitive areas.”
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino in San Bernardino, California, issued a statement this week criticizing the “change and increase in immigration enforcement in our region and specifically our diocese.”
“We have experienced at least one case of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents entering a parish property and seizing several people,” Bishop Alberto Rojas wrote.
“While we surely respect and appreciate the right of law enforcement to keep our communities safe from violent criminals, we are now seeing agents detain people as they leave their homes, in their places of work and other randomly chosen public settings.”
The Allendale United Methodist Church of St. Petersburg just ran a full page ad in the Tampa Bay Times in which it apologized to the LGBTQIA community for the harm that was done to it by the UMC. The add is a wonderful expression of love for all. Please find it and read it.
LGBTQ+ affirming Allendale United Methodist Church, located in St. Petersburg, FL, hosts drag queen-led worship services. In one service, drag queens perform and lip-sync to Dolly Parton’s version of “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Allendale’s most recent Instagram post reads,… pic.twitter.com/h9omwmnhSE
Rev. Andy Oliver (he/him/his), pastor of Allendale United Methodist Church in St Petersburg, Florida, lights a candle wrapped in barbed wire in honor of alleged wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia—during his EASTER church service.
I’ve had this idea for a few days, but I wasn’t sure about it. Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unfairly exploded on a reporter for merely doing her job, so I decided he deserves this. Fuck Pete Hegseth (but not literally).
Stinky Pete attacked a reporter, from Fox News of all places, for doing her job. Her crime was asking Pete a question.
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News asked about whether there was any certainty that highly enriched uranium was stored at the mountain bunker bombed by the US, given that satellite photos showed more than a dozen trucks were seen there two days in advance.
Pete replied, “Of course, we’re watching every single aspect,” Hegseth said. “But, Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.”
How did Griffin misrepresent anything that Trump has said with that question? The question was based on the fact that satellite photos showed trucks at the site days before the bombing,” and while Trump was publicly mulling over whether or not to bomb it. In fact, it’s a very important question and there’s nothing wrong with it, even to the point that it shouldn’t piss anyone off, even a goose-stepping drunky fascist who can’t keep his dick in his pants. But, I guess the question does challenge the talking points and propaganda the regime has put out. This question was apparently worse than the time Sean Spicer was asked about crowd sizes. How dare you!!!!
After the bombing, Trump said Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated.” As it turns out, not so much unless “totally” doesn’t mean totally anymore. Maybe they could say it was slightly obliterated. This is like the time when the military killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Trump said he “died like a dog,” while telling other huge lies about the operation.
An early intelligence assessment leaked to media outlets on Tuesday suggested that the strikes only set Iran’s enrichment program back by a few months and did not destroy its core components.
Any challenge to the narrative that the sites weren’t “totally oblitereated” pisses TACO off nearly as much as being called TACO.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, and reportedly found that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings. Basically, Trump bombed the fuck out of their doors.
One of the idiot trolls at GoComics claimed the media was following Iran’s talking points, but no…we’re following US intelligence on this. By the way, US intelligence, or any other intelligence, doesn’t include Donald Trump. This is not the first time Trump has had issues with American intelligence. He once sided with Putin over US intelligence.
I don’t know which makes the regime angrier, the analysis or the leak. It sure pissed off White House SpokesBarbie Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt rejected the intelligence report and accused CNN, which first revealed it, of “fake news.” She later sent a tweet. (snip-MORE, tweet’s on the page)
Jermaine Thomas, who says he was deported to Jamaica without a passport though he’s never been to the country (Provided by Jermaine Thomas)
Ten years ago, Jermaine Thomas was at the center of a case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court: Should a baby born to a U.S. citizen father deployed to a U.S. Army base in Germany have U.S. citizenship?
Last week, Thomas was escorted onto a plane with his wrists and ankles shackled, he says. He arrived in Jamaica, a country he’d never been to, a stateless man.
“I’m looking out the window on the plane,” Thomas told the Chronicle, “and I’m hoping the plane crashes and I die.”
Thomas has no citizenship, according to court documents. He is not a citizen of Germany (where he was born in 1986) or of the United States (where his father served in the military for nearly two decades) or of his father’s birth country of Jamaica (a place he’d never been).
Thomas doesn’t remember Germany. He says he thinks his first memory is in Washington state, but he moved around so much in his military family that it was hard to keep track.
He spent most of his life in Texas, much of it homeless and in and out of jail, he says. His parents divorced when he was too little to remember. His mother, a nurse, remarried to another man in the Army. They moved a lot, and as she and the stepfather had their own kids, Thomas says he struggled in the new family setup.
So at about about 11 years old, he went to stay with his biological father in Florida. By then, his dad was retired from an 18-year career in the U.S. military, he says. His dad died from kidney failure not long after, in 2010.
“If you’re in the U.S. Army, and the Army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there, and your child makes a mistake after you pass away, and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be okay with them just kicking your child out of the country?” Jermaine says, phoning the Chronicle from a hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. “It was just Memorial Day. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”
From Killeen to Kingston
Thomas says it all began with an eviction in Killeen, Texas, which is about an hour north of Austin. Thomas didn’t know where he’d go next, so to get things out of the apartment quickly, he says he moved all of the stuff into the front yard.
While he was gathering things up in the yard, he was joined by his rottweiler, Miss Sassy Pants, whose leash he had tied to a pole.
Then Killeen police showed up. Thomas says they asked for his ID without telling him what he was in trouble for. He says he responded: I haven’t committed a crime and I don’t want to talk to you. They told him that they’d gotten a call about a dog being tied up. Next, they asked if he had the dog’s immunization records or chip number. He said they checked her chip and didn’t see Sassy’s name, so they told Thomas they’d be taking her to the pound.
The dog was loaded into a truck, and Thomas says at this point, he was arrested. Killeen police confirmed that he was arrested for suspected trespassing with no other charges. That’s a misdemeanor in Texas. He went to the Bell County Jail, where he says a court-appointed lawyer told him he could be sitting in a cell for eight months if he wanted to take the case to trial.
After about 30 days in jail, which resulted in losing his job as a janitor, Thomas says he signed paperwork to be released with conditions. But instead of being released, he was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Waco. He was there only a few hours before being transferred again to an ICE detention camp in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston.
He says he spent two and half months incarcerated in Conroe, and it seemed like no one knew the status of his case. According to Thomas, a deportation officer told him repeatedly that he had a very unique case, and that it was out of their hands in Texas, and now in the hands of “Washington, D.C.”
“You keep explaining to me that I’m being detained in suspended custody, in detention, but if I don’t have a release day and I don’t get to see a judge, that’s pretty much a life sentence,” Thomas says.
Feeling frustrated with his indefinite imprisonment, Thomas says he called the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Inspector General to file a report about what he thought was unlawful detention.
His case only got more confusing after that, he says. After a guard told him he would soon be released, Thomas was allowed a mesh bag to put his property in. He says all he had was some paperwork from his citizenship case and a phone. The phone didn’t have service – naturally, as he hadn’t been able to pay his phone bill since being incarcerated.
Officers brought Thomas to a room full of Spanish speakers. Thomas says he found one man who spoke “broken English” who said they were all being deported to Nicaragua. “So I get to banging on the door, and I’m like: Hey, why am I in here with them?”
Jermaine Thomas in Kingston (Provided by Jermaine Thomas)
Thomas says he decided then that if officers asked him to put his hands behind his back, he just wouldn’t. “I thought, I’m not gonna do it,” he says. “I’m gonna refuse to do it: Respectfully, I don’t mean to be a problem or anything like that, but you’re not gonna just kidnap me and traffic me across the lands and international lines and deport me like I’ve been seeing y’all do on the news.”
The Back of the Airbus
At least they sent him to Jamaica, says Thomas’ new friend and fellow deportee Tanya Campbell. It may be a country he’s never stepped foot in, and it may be he’s only there because of his “appearance,” as she puts it, but at least the language is English. Campbell, who actually grew up in Jamaica, was imprisoned for manslaughter more than a decade ago in New York. Upon her release from prison a few weeks ago, ICE picked her up. On May 29, she says she was one of roughly 100 people brought to a plane on a tarmac in Miami, bound for Kingston.
At the airport, as she exited a van and was being shackled, she noticed a man surrounded by between eight and 10 officers. That’s how she describes first seeing Jermaine. He was the last to board the plane, “And it was like a walk of shame,” she says. He was seated at the back with officers on either side. She assumed he was a fugitive.
Thomas says he sat in the 31st row. Landing was “bizarre, too real,” he says. “It was like a stampede. Everybody just got up and got off the plane.”
Thomas waited in the last row.He says an ICE officer got on the plane and said: “I don’t have records for more than half of these people. There’s something wrong.”
ICE and DHS did not respond to our questions.
Thomas says he doesn’t know what to do in Jamaica. He finds people difficult to understand, plus many speak Patois, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to get a job. He doesn’t know if it’s the Jamaican or U.S. government paying for his hotel room, and for how long that will last. He’s not sure if it’s even legal for him to be there.
Editor’s Note Friday, June 6, 4:44pm: This story has been updated to correct the year of Thomas’ father’s death. The Chronicle regrets the error.
The final version of Ohio’s two-year state operating budget retains anti-LGBTQ provisions, requires Governor’s Merit Scholarship recipients pledge to remain in Ohio after graduation, and ties state funding to compliance with a new higher education law.
The budget now heads to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature, which he must sign by June 30. He can line-item veto provisions in the budget.
Anti-LGBTQ provisions
A handful of anti-LGBTQ+ provisions are sprinkled throughout the budget, including a provision that would only recognize two sexes — male and female.
“Do we really have to make a law that says that men are men and women are women?” state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, asked. “Do we really have to define that? We shouldn’t have to, but apparently we do.”
The budget would require public libraries to put books related to sexual orientation or gender identity in an area of the library that is out of sight for minors.
“If moms and dads want their kids to be indoctrinated within that, that’s up to the moms and dads, but we’re not going to put it in children’s faces in the children’s sections of the libraries,” Click said.
Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, called out the library provision.
“If you are one of the 20% of young people who identify as LGBTQ, you’re not going to be a hero in that story,” he said. “We have to have more books that show you as a leader, as a champion, as a hero.”
The budget would also ban Pride flags from being flown at public buildings and prohibit giving funds to youth homeless shelters that house transgender youth, even if they also serve youth who are not transgender.
“We are not hanging out the welcome mat for people from the LGBTQ community,” said Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood. “We should be a place where folks can just be who they are authentically and live and let live.”
Higher education provisions
The Governor’s Merit Scholarship awards the top 5% of each high school graduating class a $5,000 scholarship each year to attend an Ohio college or university.
Under the final version of the budget, scholarship recipients must sign a statement of commitment to live in Ohio for three years immediately after graduation starting in fiscal year 2027.
“If we want our young people to stay in Ohio, to start their careers in Ohio, to start a family in Ohio, we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we are doing that in this budget,” said Ohio House Finance Chair Brian Stewart, R-Ashville.
The Senate’s version of the budget would have required scholarship recipients sign a promissory note, but the final version of the budget instead requires students to sign a statement of commitment to live in Ohio for the first three years after graduating college.
“It was deemed (the promissory note) was a little bit heavy-handed and so we tried to roll that back,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon said.
The budget allocates $47 million for fiscal year 2026 and $70 million in fiscal year 2027 for the Governor’s Merit Scholarship.
The Governor’s Merit Scholarship was enacted through the last state budget two years ago and 76% of the state’s 6,250 eligible students from the class of 2024 accepted the scholarship. Eighty-seven percent of Ohio students accepted the scholarship in its second year and 11 rural counties had a 100% acceptance rate.
The budget ties a portion of the State Share of Instruction to compliance with Senate Bill 1, a new higher education law banning diversity efforts, creates post-tenure reviews and an American civic literacy course, among other things.
The law affects Ohio’s public universities and community colleges and each university must submit a report showing compliance to the House and Senate higher education committees by March 1, according to the budget.
Housing provisions
The budget kept housing provisions the Senate added to the budget — $90 for the Residential Development Revolving Loan Program and $10 million for the Residential Economic Development District.
The Residential Development Revolving Loan Program supports new, single-family residential homes in rural areas of the state.
“If we want to grow our population, we have to have places for folks to live,” Stewart said. “This is going to be directed to small counties. We can’t be growing housing just in the three C’s, we need to be growing housing all across Ohio.”
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.
In the decade since Jim Obergefell won his Supreme Court case that made same-sex marriage federally legal, hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples have married in the U.S. (Eric Gay/AP Photo)
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?”
