Texas Gay Marriage Plaintiff Snubs Gov. Abbott On Wedding Invite

Issue still divides former law school buddies.

Anti-gay Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and Mark Phariss were good law school buddies at Vanderbilt University in the early 1980s. 

In fact, when Abbott was hit by a falling tree limb while jogging in 1984, leaving him paralyzed, Phariss (image, left) flew from Tulsa to Houston to visit his bedside.

But after Phariss became a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging Texas’ same-sex marriage ban in 2013, their relationship grew strained. Abbott, then the state’s attorney general, vigorously defended the law, fighting to deny equal rights to his old friend. 

On Friday, Phariss and his partner of 18 years, Vic Holmes, finally obtained their marriage license after prevailing in the lawsuit. The couple now plans a “Texas-sized wedding” in November, but Phariss says even though he’s continued to exchange Christmas cards with the governor over the years, Abbott won’t be on the list of invitees. 

“We want people there who are supportive,” Phariss told The New Civil Rights Movement. “We don’t want a zoo for a wedding, and having Greg there, while that would be a plus in terms of how we’re moving people along, he would never come anyway.” 

When Abbott was asked in early June if he’d attend a same-sex wedding, he dodged the question by saying, “A gay marriage in Texas would be illegal, and so I’d probably would not attend an illegal event.”

A spokesman for Abbott’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday about whether the governor would have attended Phariss and Holmes’ wedding had he been invited. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a GOP presidential candidate who opposes same-sex marriage, attended the wedding of a gay friend earlier this year. Other GOP presidential candidates have also said they’d attend a same-sex wedding. 

But for Abbott, a devout Catholic who leads the nation’s largest red state, attending a same-sex wedding could be politically risky. 

“The Supreme Court has abandoned its role as an impartial judicial arbiter and has become an unelected nine-member legislature,” Abbott said in a a statement following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. “Five Justices on the Supreme Court have imposed on the entire country their personal views on an issue that the Constitution and the Court’s previous decisions reserve to the people of the States.”

Phariss said both he and Abbott were invited to discuss the Texas marriage case at the Vanderbilt law school’s upcoming reunion in October, but Abbott declined.  

Although Abbott won’t be on hand for the wedding, plenty of other dignitaries will. They include Texas marriage co-plaintiffs Cleopatra DeLeon and Nicole Dimetman, openly gay Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, Phariss said. DOMA-busting attorney Robbie Kaplan is a maybe, but Neel Lane, who represented the couples in the Texas lawsuit, will deliver a toast.   

Phariss and Holmes, an Air Force veteran, obtained their marriage license Friday from the Bexar County Clerk’s Office in San Antonio, where they were turned away in 2013 and told, “We don’t do that in Texas.” Bexar County Clerk Gerard “Gerry” Rickhoff, one of the few Republican elected officials in the state who publicly supports marriage equality, personally issued the license to Phariss and Holmes. 

“That was the law of the land back then and so today I’m happy to be on the right side of history where we have an enlightenment attitude,” said Rickhoff.

Phariss said 250-300 people are expected to attend the wedding in their hometown of Frisco, a conservative Dallas suburb. 

“Our rings — wedding bands with one diamond embedded in each from diamonds previously included in a ring of my deceased father — will be carried on two flags, both courtesy of Sen. Harry Reid’s office,” Phariss said. “One flew over the U.S. Capitol on April 28, 2015, the date SCOTUS held hearings in Obergefell, and the other flew over the U.S. Capitol on June 26, 2015, the date SCOTUS issued its decision in Obergefell.

Sadly, in addition to Abbott, some of the couple’s closest relatives will be absent from the ceremony, including Phariss’ twin sister and Holmes’ parents, due to their opposition to same-sex marriage.  

“To be honest, he’s kind of lower on my list of who I care about who’s not coming to my wedding,” Phariss said of the governor. “I’m more offended by Vic’s parents and my sister.”

 

Image by Scott Hagar, courtesy of the couple
Video via Fox San Antonio