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When Ellen Gerber and Pearl Berlin began their relationship nearly 50 years ago, the two women couldn’t envision a day when they would marry.

Now, the High Point couple have lived to see it.

Gerber and Berlin, who formally married in Maine in the fall of 2013, were overwhelmed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay marriage must be recognized in all 50 states. The historic 5-4 ruling, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, removes restrictions by state governments against same-sex marriages.

Berlin told The High Point Enterprise that she received six phone calls at the couple’s north High Point home in the first half-hour after the Supreme Court ruling was announced shortly after 10 a.m.

“We’re over the moon,” Gerber said. “It is so wonderful to have us seen as human beings who have the right to marry the person you love. That’s an amazing thing that we’ve lived to see this.”

The couple, whose relationship was the subject of the documentary film “Living in the Overlap,” met each other in the mid-1960s and moved to the Triad in 1971 when Berlin took a faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Gerber later attended law school at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Gerber said she and Berlin not only couldn’t have envisioned gay marriage becoming a reality when they met, but even 20 years ago when the issue began percolating in legal circles.

In the 1990s, Gerber was one of the three co-founders of the N.C. Gay and Lesbian Attorneys association. Each year the group would hold a statewide conference.

The luncheon speaker 20 years ago was Evan Wolfson, an organizer of the campaign to get Hawaii to become the first state to recognize gay marriage. 

“I came home and I said, ‘This is ridiculous. There’s no way in the world,’” Gerber recalled.

While couples such as Gerber and Berlin were overjoyed Friday, opponents of gay marriage expressed their dismay with the ruling and what it foreshadows for the direction of America.

North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on same-sex marriage in the Amendment One referendum issue three years ago, said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th.
                                                                                          
“This decision undermines the ability of states to set public policy within their borders as voters in North Carolina overwhelmingly did in 2012. I’m also extremely concerned about the threat this ruling poses to the conscience rights of people and organizations who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” Foxx said.

The leader of the Raleigh-based N.C. Values Coalition said the ruling creates an “illusory definition” for marriage.

“This landmark decision will bring peril to family structure and stability and will threaten the religious liberties upon which our country was founded,” said coalition Executive Director Tami Fitzgerald. 

But Gerber said she’s confident in the next several years that the controversy over gay marriage will recede, just as the debate over interracial marriage has withered away since the Supreme Court ruled against the ban in Southern states on weddings between blacks and whites. The Loving v. Virginia decision to prohibit state bans on interracial marriage was issued in 1967.

The fight for marriage equality for gay men and lesbians shifted the debate to a discussion over whether someone could marry the person he or she loves, Gerber said.

“People began to change their mental image,” she said. “The change of the focus in people’s minds was very consequential.”

http://www.hpenews.com/news/x110776439/Supporters-ecstatic-opponents-dismayed-by-marriage-ruling