Tuesday, January 14, 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Mark Hatfield U.S. District Court, 1000 SW Third Ave., Portland
Please join Queen’s Bench at the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse (Portland) on January 14, 2020 at noon for a very special conversation about Geiger between Judge McShane and Multnomah County Judge Katharine von Ter Stegge, counsel for Multnomah County in that case.
Forty-three years after litigation for same-sex marriage first began in the United States, Deanna Geiger and Janine Nelson, a lesbian couple, sued Governor Kitzhaber and other state government officials in federal court seeking to overturn Oregon’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The following year, on May 19, 2014, U.S.D.C. Judge Michael McShane granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, resulting in the immediate issuance of same-sex marriage licenses in Oregon. Judge McShane noted that he anticipated that “a large number of Oregonians, perhaps even a majority,” would have religious or moral objections to his ruling. “Where will this all lead? I know that many suggest we are going down a slippery slope that will have no moral boundaries. To those who truly harbor such fears, I can only say this: Let us look less to the sky to see what might fall; rather, let us look to each other … and rise.” Geiger v. Kitzhaber, 994 F. Supp. 2d 1128, 1147 (D. Or. 2014).
