Same-sex marriage became legal throughout New Mexico ten years ago on Tuesday. But the story of same-sex marriage didn’t start there.

On August 24, 2013, Linda Siegle and Liz Stefanics were the first same-sex couple to wed in Santa Fe County. The Doña Ana County Clerk had issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples several days before.

In August and September of 2013, several county clerks, including those in Doña Ana and Santa Fe counties, began issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples ahead of a New Mexico Supreme Court decision on Dec. 19, 2013, that legalized same-sex marriage in the state.

Not until two years later, in 2015, did the U.S. Supreme Court catch up with its Obergefell v. Hodges decision, that legalized same-sex marriage for individuals regardless of what state they live in. 

Siegle said she and Stefanics, who is a state senator, had been a couple for nearly 20 years by 2013 and Siegle didn’t, philosophically, believe in marriage. Being a part of the Baby Boomer generation, Siegle had grown up believing that marriage is a part of patriarchal society and that it is bad, as an institution, for women. 

“Before I came out as a lesbian, I married a guy. A wonderful guy in Texas. I had to change my name. I said, ‘what bullshit is this?’ That was the law in Texas. Thank goodness we’ve gotten rid of that,” Siegle said.

So when she and Stefanics heard the Santa Fe County clerk was about to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Siegle said they discussed it, then decided, “ok, let’s just go do it.”

Siegle said they arrived early the next morning and were the first ones at the office. She said a line formed later on. Siegle and Stefanics wed in the county commission chambers with flowers and a few close friends. She said afterward, Stefanics went home and Siegle went back to work. The next day, Siegle left for a kayaking trip in Utah.

But even if getting married was not a romantic gesture for Siegle and Stefanics, Siegle said they understood the importance of what it meant to the LGBTQ+ community. Being unable to legally marry one’s partner meant same-sex couples lacked protections under the law. 

Siegle said that when state Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, introduced a bill years ago that granted all the legal protections to same-sex domestic partnerships that heterosexual couples receive when they marry, the bill was 850 pages long. She said the federal government bestows 200 benefits to married couples.

Siegle said the most common concern among the LGBTQ+ community prior to marriage equality was around health. Before same-sex couples had the right to marry, they could not make decisions for each other in times of medical emergencies or, in some cases, were not even allowed to visit their loved one in the hospital. 

“Now with marriage if one partner has a baby, it’s automatic (that the other spouse becomes a parent) because that’s what marriage guarantees. There’s a host of things we take for granted and don’t think about,” she said.

At the time, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver served as the Bernalillo County clerk. She volunteered to become the defendant in the case that went to the state Supreme Court, Griego v. Oliver, that led to marriage equality in New Mexico.

Toulouse Oliver said she felt she was the right person to be the defendant in the case, even though she is an ally of the LGBTQ+ community, because she wasn’t suing on moralistic grounds but purely because, as a public official, she had to follow the letter of the law as it was then understood.

“At the end of the day, we elected officials should be expected to follow the law,” she told NM Political Report. 

Toulouse Oliver said she was able to acknowledge her personal views, that same-sex couples should have the right to marry, while being sued for following the law and refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of the legal framework at the time.

“When the state Supreme Court affirmed the right, I was really happy. Sometimes you have to be the defendant in a lawsuit to get the morally right outcome,” she said.

Toulouse Oliver said that before the court announced its decision, her office had preprinted 1,000 licenses in preparation of the same-sex couples who would be lining up at her office door.

“We were ready to go the first thing the next morning [after the decision]. There was a line out the door. It was my favorite day ever in my government service profession. The love and the happiness and the beauty of that day. Every time someone came in to get a license, everyone cheered. Everyone was getting flowers including me. It was great,” Toulouse Oliver said.

Toulouse Oliver said the one drawback was that for a very brief period of time, when the case went first to district court, there were individuals who perceived Toulouse Oliver as an antagonist to the LGBTQ+ community.

“It was really hard for a brief period of time,” she said.

Marshall Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Equality New Mexico,  said the three or four couples who filed suit against Toulouse Oliver knew, along with their lawyers, that the Equal Protection Clause in the New Mexico constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex. Martinez said the plaintiffs believed, correctly, that the state Supreme Court would read that clause in the same way the plaintiffs did: that marriage equality is protected by the state constitution. 

Martinez said that one of the ripple effects of individual states, like New Mexcio, to recognize marriage equality has been a drastically higher approval and acceptance of same-sex marriage by the general public.

Martinez said “It’s huge” for Americans to think of marriage equality as a basic right.

But, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision last year, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion stating that, basically, all bodily autonomy rights the court has ruled on over the last approximately 60 years should be reconsidered and he named Obergefell v. Hodges by name. 

This signal that the Supreme Court could be friendly to a case that would question marriage equality has individuals in the LGBTQ+ community worried. In addition, the current political wedge issue has shifted to transgender individuals, Martinez said.

“It’s important to celebrate the win but it didn’t do anything for transgender folks. It didn’t change state laws across the country that allow trans folks to be fired. Now it’s a defensive fight,” Martinez said.

Siegle laughed when asked if, 10 years later, her views on marriage have changed. 

“As friends of mine say, ‘if gay people can get married, then that automatically changes the institution of marriage,’” she said. “You’re like Mrs. Somebody [when married to a man]. I didn’t like the whole husband and wife thing because of the stereotypes and expectations. When you’re gay, there’s not necessarily those stereotypes and assumptions about men and women.”