Students apply for marriage licenses as peaceful protest

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Four Oakland students were denied a marriage license Monday. The reason? Same-sex unions are not recognized in Michigan.

As a peaceful protest against the illegality of gay marriage, junior psychology majors Kelly Shaw and Alexa Van Vliet, and freshman linguistics major Mark Martinez and junior Japanese major Paul Pontois arrived at the Oakland County Clerk’s office to apply for marriage licenses as same-sex couples.

“We were denied,” Shaw said.

Shaw and Van Vliet were asked to provide their driver’s licenses and birth certificates, leading them to believe they might succeed.

“She ended up going to talk to someone and they printed out the law in Michigan that says same-sex unions are not legal and brought it to us,” Shaw said. “They only recognize the unique relationship between one man and one woman.”

Pontois and Martinez experienced a similar rejection to their request.

“The woman gave us a look because we were holding hands, and she’s like, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t do that here,'” Pontois said. “So I asked, ‘If I came here with this girl and didn’t even know who she was, right off the street, I could marry her?’ And she said ‘yes’. That’s really a kick to the face.”

He said that this sort of answer is one of the reasons why they participated in the peaceful protest.

“It made me angry because I have to conform to the heterosexual norms in order to marry the one that I love,” Pontois said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I could pick up a hooker off the street and get married in the same night.”

The two couples that participated are just friends, not actually dating, but held hands while in the courthouse.

“As we were standing there we did get a lot of looks because we were holding hands,” Van Vliet said. “I felt very sad because we’re good people. We went there for something that seems easy enough. It wasn’t like we were criminals. We didn’t do anything wrong. But they said no.”

All four students are active in the Gay Straight Alliance and frequent visitors of the Gender and Sexuality Center at OU. They said that some fellow students didn’t participate because of scheduling conflicts, while others felt nervous about the idea.

“Unfortunately, not everybody can be out in the Center and so a lot of them are kind of afraid that somebody, maybe parents or friends, will get wind of it,” Shaw said. “That’s understandable.”

They said they hope to make this an annual event so that more people can be involved.

“Next year we want to get as many people as possible so that we take up the whole line and person after person can say, ‘We want to get a marriage license,'” Van Vliet said. “I think it would make a stronger statement if we had a lot of couples.”

Pontois emphasized that even though he may not be ready to actually get married right now, he wants the option in the future.

“It’s about visibility and making sure that people know we exist and we’re out there,” Pontois said. “We’re just college kids who want to get married one day and have families just like everybody else. Hopefully by the time we’re ready to do that, we can.”