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First marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in West Virginia

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — They had waited long enough.

That’s why Chris Bostic, 34, of Charleston said he picked up a bottle champagne and headed to his partner’s office on Thursday afternoon soon after he heard the news that marriage licenses were being issued to same-sex couples for the first time ever in West Virginia.

Chris Bostic (left) and David Epp of Charleston were the first gay couple to apply for and receive a marriage license in Kanawha County on Thursday.

Bostic and his partner, David Epp, 33, became the first gay couple to legally apply for and receive a marriage license in Kanawha County when they paid their $56 fee in Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick’s office shortly after 4 p.m. on Thursday.

Epp is a native of Maryland where same-sex marriage has been legal since January of last year, but he said he wanted to wait to get the couple’s marriage license in West Virginia.

“I think it was important for me and, I think for Chris too, for it to happen here,” Epp started to say. “No,” interjected Bostic. “I wanted to go to Maryland. I wanted to do it now. My fight has been to go to Maryland.”

“I’m not a native here,” Epp said, “But I feel like I’ve been accepted by everyone here and I love being here in this state and it’s important to me that it happen here — where I am and where we are.”

The two had not finalized wedding plans as of Thursday.

Soon after Epp and Bostic had their license in hand, a second couple arrived to apply. It was a different trip to the Kanawha County Courthouse for Nancy Michael and Jane Fenton of St. Albans, a couple of 16 years, who had previously been denied a license.

“The first time that we came here to apply for a marriage license, a little over year ago, we were nervous and shaky and didn’t know what was going to happen and, today, it’s a home run,” Fenton said.

Jane Fenton (left) and Nancy Michael of St. Albans, one of the couples who had filed a lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriages successfully applied for a marriage license on Thursday in Kanawha County.

Fenton and Michael — along with their son Drew, 7 — are one of the three couples who filed a lawsuit in Huntington Federal Court last October challenging West Virginia’s Defense of Marriage Act which had defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

“We’re not really activists, but you have to stand up for the important things,” Fenton said.

Michael agreed, “We were raised in married families and we want to raise our son in a married family,” she said. “We have traditional values. They just don’t look like everybody else’s,” she said.

“We still take our son to church. He’s in Boy Scouts. I’m his Cubmaster. We are crossing guards at his school. We’re involved in the community. We’re just like everyone else,” Fenton said.

The two are now planning their wedding.

In Cabell County, though, one of the other couples involved in that federal lawsuit, McGee vs. Cole, did not wait. A wedding for Casie McGee and Sarah Adkins from Huntington was held on the steps of the Cabell County Courthouse soon after they received their marriage license.

“It’s a huge win,” Adkins told WSAZ Television shortly after the ceremony. “It’s a legal win, but for us it’s just, we’ve been a family for a long time and it’s just nice to be able to have that legal protection to go with our actual family.”

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced his office would no longer be defending the Defense of Marriage Act following action from the U.S. Supreme Court, earlier this week, which resulted in a court decision striking down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriages being upheld.

The Virginia ruling came from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. which sets legal precedent for West Virginia.

Epp said he was grateful to the couples who had stepped forward to challenge the law. “This is easy for us. We didn’t actually file any lawsuit against the state or the clerk. We’re just thankful that they fought for us,” he said.





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