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Couple weds at Wichita pride event as ruling sparks worry over future of same-sex marriage

Elliot and Juniper Chibs got married in front of hundreds of people during a pride event Saturday at Naftzger Park.

The Wichita couple planned to get married later this year, but Elliot, attending her first pride event, decided to surprise her partner. Ordained minister Amanda McMullen held back tears as she married them during a pause in the live music. It was her first time doing a wedding since she lost her father, who she said taught her to accept all people and love them.

Juniper is a musician and used to being in front of people. It was more terrifying for Elliot, who just recently started hanging a rainbow flag and showing her pride at work. She said she’s found that customers are more accepting than she thought.

Their marriage is legal now, but that could change if two things happen: If Juniper, who is transgender, moves forward with plans to legally be identified as a woman, and if the U.S. Supreme Court follows through on the words of one of its members.

On Friday, the court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, leaving it up to states to keep or ban abortions. With the decision, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should review other precedents, including the right to same-sex marriage.

Thomas’ words have Elliot Chibs and others concerned.

“We are afraid they are going to take away gay marriage. I’m terrified,” she said. “Do you think anyone would choose to be gay? After everything we go through, all the assaults you face, the discrimination, the hate on a daily basis. ... It’s scary to be gay. No one would choose this.”

Mayor Brandon Whipple, who attended the pride event, was asked and planned to sign off on the marriage as a witness, but had to leave for another community event after the ceremony was delayed.

Whipple, who plans to send the couple a card, said the court’s decision and Thomas’ words are “political activism from the bench.”

“I think it is a shock and a wake-up… that the rights that people enjoy are actually at risk now,” he said.

The court’s ruling and the possibility that same-sex marriage could be in jeopardy drew people to Saturday’s event despite temperatures in the 90s, Wichita Pride board member Max Wilson said. Several hundred people attended.

“It’s terrifying to worry that any right might be taken away, to see that we are actively moving backward,” he said.

“It can be a domino effect from here,” said Wilson’s partner, Brett McGlothern.

They have been together for four years and bought a house together, which Wilson said is “as serious as it gets.” They’ve talked about marriage, which wouldn’t be an option if the conservative-majority court follows through on Thomas’ words.

“What the decision showed extreme conservative groups is that you can make those fights and bring them to the Supreme Court and win, and that should terrify everyone,” he said.

In his concurring opinion, Thomas wrote: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Griswold v. Connecticut is a 1965 ruling by the court that gave married couples the right to access contraceptives. The 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling said that states could not ban consensual gay sex. And the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Justice Samuel Alito, part of the majority that overturned Roe, said the decision applied only to abortion.

“Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” he wrote.

But three dissenting judges — Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — said “no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.

“The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone,” they wrote in their dissent. “To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. ... They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of life decisions.”