The Long Walk Down the Aisle
Meet the couple that brought same sex marriage to the state
BY LEIGHANNE MARTIN
Colleen Condon never cared about being first. That’s not what drove the Charleston County Councilwoman in her battle with the state over its denial of her same-sex marriage license. “I just cared about being honest,” she says.
Condon had been married for years and had a teenage son, but her marriage ended in 2011. Soon after, people started to speculate about her sexuality. “Yes, I'm gay. I didn’t think that was a scandal in 2013, and I don't think that it’s one now,” she says. “My life has been a lot easier in the last four years being honest with myself and honest with my family and friends about what makes me happy and what makes me tick than it was the 40 years before that.”
But while Condon’s hometown is a premiere wedding destination, she and her fiancé Nichols Bleckley couldn’t get married here. That is, until they decided to change that fact.
Condon and Bleckley began their battle against the state's gay marriage ban in October 2014. The couple met through a mutual friend, and after two years, Condon proposed. Bleckley wanted to get married but not until it was legal in South Carolina. “At the time, I was afraid that could be five years,” Condon recalls.
Since she’s an attorney, Condon understands how the law works and she’s not afraid of courts like most. “I also have a strong belief that our justice system is supposed to work,” she says. But it took her a while to realize that she could change the law in this instance. “Like many, did I think marriage equality was going to come to South Carolina in 2014? No, I really didn't. The Bostic case was certainly what drove everything for South Carolina.”
BOSTIC V. SCHAEFER was a successful 2013 lawsuit that challenged Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban and was upheld in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, on October 2014, decided to let stand the lower courts’ decisions that Virginia’s gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. This meant that the Bostic case was law not only in Virginia, but that gay marriage bans in other states covered by the Fourth Circuit could be thrown out.
“Well, being that I'm a lawyer, as soon as I read it, I went, “Oh, my gosh, marriage equality is legal in South Carolina,” Condon recalls.
Condon and Bleckley decided it was time to get married, and they submitted their application for a marriage license to Charleston Probate Judge Irvin Condon, a distant cousin of Colleen’s. But while Bleckley and Condon’s paperwork was approved, Attorney General Alan Wilson stepped in and asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to require that Judge Condon withhold the couple’s marriage license until another state case, Bradacs v. Haley, was decided. The Bradacs case sought to have South Carolina recognize same sex marriages from other states.
Condon filed her own lawsuit on Oct. 15, and by Nov. 12, after multiple notions, the judge decided that marriage licenses shall be issued to same sex couples in South Carolina because of due process and equal protection. A week later, on Nov. 19, 2014, Condon and Bleckley were the first same-sex couple in South Carolina to be issued a marriage license.
FROM THE TIME THEY GOT ENGAGED, Condon and Bleckley knew wanted to get married in the state where they both grew up. However, after they got their marriage license, the couple didn’t run the next day to get married. “Some folks were confused. They would say, ‘Why would you get a marriage license if you weren't going to get married the next day?’ Well, if you are straight, you can do all the planning and send out all of the invitations and wait until the end to get the license, because you know you are going to get it. We didn’t have that luxury.” The couple knew that getting the license was their first priority, and once that was accomplished they could begin planning a small family wedding on Folly Beach in fall 2015.
“I really expected problems from some of my very Catholic family members,” says Condon. But, she says, she’s been pleasantly surprised. “My family has been extremely supportive. When we came home from one of these first court dates back in October, there were flowers on the front porch from a neighbor saying congratulations. Everybody was supportive here.
“I think they’ve been kind enough to give me the respect that I tried to make a marriage work with a man—a very kind guy—but we weren’t right together, and it wasn't fair to him to try and force making the marriage work for the sake of our son.” In fact, she says, their son,
Colleen Condon (right) and her fiance, Nichols Bleckley
now 15, even knew it was for the best. “I told him it was a little sad to realize your dad and I are splitting up,’ ” she recalls, “and he said, ‘Mom, you’re happier, I’m happier, Dad’s happier, we’re all happier.”
THE REV. JEREMY RUTLEDGE, pastor of Circular Congregational Church on Meeting Street, was overjoyed to learn that marriage equality made its way to South Carolina. Rutledge, who moved to Charleston three years ago from Houston, shared Condon’s firm belief in marriage equality.
“It was something we were used to standing up for and losing to for so long,” he recalls. “When marriage equality came here, people were unambiguously joyful, because they thought they would never see it. It was beautiful and all it was about was love. Nobody wanted anything special; people just wanted to be a family just like everybody else. They wanted health insurance with their partner and hospital visits and to be able to do taxes together—the most boring, ordinary things you could want.”
The Bradacs case, which was successful, has moved on to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and is expected to be decided by June of this year. “We’ve doubled the number of states where marriage equality is legal in the last four months,” Condon says, “and by this summer, I’d be hard pressed to say it’s not going to be legal across the country.”