Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Texas Jewish Women Make History as First Same-Sex Couple To Wed

(Reuters) — A Texas county issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple on Thursday, the first legal certification for a gay couple in the state since its voters about a decade ago approved a measure defining marriage as only being between a man and a woman.

A Travis County clerk said the marriage license was given to just one couple, Sarah Goodfriend and Suzanne Bryant, after a court order earlier in the day and the county, home to the state capital of Austin, is not planning to issue more licenses to same-sex couples.

“The court order only applies to this one couple,” a clerk said.

Legal experts said there was at least one case of a marriage between a same-sex couple in the early 1970s and none since the voter-approved constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage went into effect.

A U.S. district judge in Texas last year ruled the state’s bans on gay marriage unconstitutional because it denied the couples equal protection under the law. Enforcement of the decision is hold pending an appeal.

Travis County District Judge David Wahlberg ruled Goodfriend and Bryant must be granted a marriage license because not doing so violates “their rights under the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Goodfriend requested an expedited issuance because she has been in poor health due to ovarian cancer. The couple have been together for about 30 years and have two daughters, aged 17 and 12, who joined them at the county clerk’s office.

A rabbi married the couple at a county office.

“We are grateful to have had this opportunity to crack the door open in Texas. We hope it will swing open for everyone very soon,” Bryant told a news conference.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he asked the Texas Supreme Court to intervene and void the marriage license.

“The law of Texas has not changed, and will not change due to the whims of any individual judge or county clerk operating on their own capacity anywhere in Texas,” Paxton said.

The Texas Supreme Court issued a stay order that legal experts interpreted as barring additional licenses from being issued to same-sex couples based on decisions from judges in the county. The court’s brief order did not address Paxton’s request to nullify the license that had been issued.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version