'Love, community and family:' New Mexico reaches 10 years of same-sex marriage

Sep. 3—SANTA FE — As a kid, Alex Hanna never expected a wedding.

So the proposal came as a bit of a surprise when he pitched the idea of marriage to his longtime partner during a dinner party.

There was one catch: Hanna and Yon Hudson would need a court ruling to recognize their right to a marriage license.

Ten years ago, they got it. Their lawsuit in 2013 led to the first court order in New Mexico directing a county clerk to allow same-sex marriage.

It was part of a fast-moving period in New Mexico history as court rulings and challenges rolled in, culminating in a state Supreme Court decision that made the state the 17th to allow same-sex marriage.

A decade later, Hanna, now 52, said he never thought, as a kid growing up in suburban New Jersey in the 1980s, that he'd have the right to marry.

But in a recent interview, he proudly described the multicultural wedding ceremony attended by 230 people at a Santa Fe hotel, made possible after he and Hudson went to court.

"It started out about rights," Hanna said of the lawsuit, "but really became about love, community and family — and that is very powerful."

Hudson, who's 61, said practical considerations — not just the broader fight for legal rights — were on their mind before marriage. He and Hanna already knew they would grow old together. But they had heard horror stories of LGBTQ couples who had a family member swoop in to contest end-of-life medical decisions or the division of assets.

"There's always," Hudson said, "that seed in the back of your mind. 'Oh, my life is really not my own. What I have created with who I choose to love can be taken away from me at any moment because somebody disapproves of it.'"

That changed 10 summers ago. District Judge Sarah Singleton issued an order on Aug. 22, 2013, in Hanna and Hudson's case. Four days later, Judge Alan Malott delivered a similar ruling in Bernalillo County.

The decisions opened the floodgates, as couples lined up for marriage licenses in downtown Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Long-simmering debate

A decade ago, New Mexico was the only state without an explicit law or constitutional provision addressing same-sex marriage.

Legislative proposals — both for and against LGBTQ marriage — repeatedly failed at the Roundhouse. The Catholic Church, an influential institution in New Mexico, was vocal in opposition to same-sex marriage.

County clerks routinely rejected same-sex couples who applied for a marriage license, citing state forms that mentioned a bride and groom and male and female applicants.

In 2004, then-Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap, a Republican, issued about 60 marriage licenses to same-sex couples before the attorney general directed her to stop. The licenses were declared invalid.

Much of the political debate at the time centered on civil unions, not marriage.

But change arrived quickly in late 2013.

On Aug. 21, Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins, a Democrat, began issuing same-sex marriage licenses. He said there was no reason not to, under the law.

Then-Attorney General Gary King, also a Democrat, said he wouldn't stop Ellins.

Soon after, Judge Singleton in Santa Fe ruled on the suit filed by Hanna and Hudson, directing the clerk there to grant licenses without discriminating against same-sex couples.

By December, the issue had reached the New Mexico Supreme Court. Opponents asserted the government had an interest in "responsible procreation and child rearing" that warranted a ban on same-sex marriage.

But in a unanimous 31-page opinion authored by then-Justice Edward Chávez, the court found that procreation wasn't a condition for marriage. Indeed, the Chávez opinion wrote, people who are older, infertile or choose not to have children are permitted to marry.

And same-sex couples, he noted, already had the right to raise children.

Ultimately, Chávez and the other justices ruled that "barring individuals from marrying and depriving them of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of civil marriage solely because of their sexual orientation" violated the state Constitution, which requires people in similar situations to be treated equally under the law.

Santa Fe attorney and former state House Speaker Brian Egolf, a Democrat who represented Hanna and Hudson in their lawsuit, said the landscape changed quickly that summer after years of debate.

"To me," he said, "it's an example of something where society and the law came together to get something right."

NM not 'judgmental'

New Mexico is among the nation's leaders in the share of same-sex couples.

The state has about 7.4 same-sex couples per 1,000 households, well above the national rate of 5.6, according to the Williams Institute, a research organization based at the University of California-Los Angeles.

By that standard, New Mexico ranks No. 6 among states for same-sex couples, trailing five states concentrated in the Northeast and along the West Coast.

Linda Siegle, a lobbyist and member of the governing board of Santa Fe Community College, said she isn't surprised to see New Mexico among the leaders for same-sex couples.

The state, she said, has long had a "live and let live" attitude.

"That was one of the things that attracted me to come here — you could do anything," Siegle said. "You can start a business — and I did — and you think you can do whatever you want to do because people don't seem to be too judgmental."

Siegle is from El Paso but moved to New Mexico in 1981.

In 2013, she and her partner, state Sen. Liz Stefanics of Cerrillos, became the first same-sex couple to marry in Santa Fe County. (Hanna and Hudson didn't sign their marriage paperwork until their 2014 wedding, a year after the lawsuit.)

Stefanics, for her part, was the first openly gay legislator in New Mexico. Her opponents didn't make it a big campaign issue, she said, when she first ran for the Senate in 1992.

She served a four-year term, later became a county commissioner and then won election to the Senate again in 2016, representing a rural chunk of northern New Mexico.

Like Hanna and Hudson, Stefanics said she never expected to be married.

"It was just more important to me to find the right person to live with and to love," Stefanics said, "and it wasn't like it needed to be that word or that institution."

Stefanics, 72, and Siegle, 71, led nonprofits dedicated to AIDS services and were active at the Roundhouse for decades, even outside of Stefanics' time as a legislator.

They are still prominent voices at the Capitol.

Siegle said people of her generation were more focused on anti-discrimination laws — such as the 2003 Human Rights Act that prohibits firing an employee because of their sexual orientation — rather than marriage, which seemed impractical politically.

"It wasn't an issue for most gay and lesbian people," Siegle said, "because we thought, 'Well, we're not going to be able to do it.'"

Stefanics added: "We never expected this during our lifetime."

Lasting relationships

Hanna, who owns a graphic design and marketing company, and Hudson, retail manager and buyer at the SITE Santa Fe museum, still live in the home where Hanna broached the idea of litigation to secure a marriage license.

The proposal came as they celebrated Hudson's birthday 10 years ago during a dinner party in the backyard. They'd already been together for 13 years.

It wasn't, Hanna said, as simple as asking, "Would you marry me?

"I said, 'Do you want to take a case on to try to get married?' And then people at the dinner party were like, 'Wow, that's romantic.'"