- November 17, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
At 8:30 a.m. Jan. 6, Mercedes Hall and Corah Raulerson walked through the doors of the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center to become the first same-sex couple to legally apply for a marriage license in Flagler County.
The two young women, both 23-year-old Palm Coast residents, met four years ago and have been watching same-sex marriage rights come to state after state, and then finally, through a judge’s order last week, to Florida.
“It’s about time,” Raulerson said. “I’m so excited.”
The couple will be legally married Jan. 9 but have planned a marriage ceremony for early October at the Riverside Pavilion in Port Orange.
Hall said she was at work when her mother, Betty Hall, got the news that same-sex marriage would be legal in Florida starting Jan. 6.
“She texted me, and she was so excited,” Mercedes Hall said. “It’s been a long time.”
Betty Hall said she had planned months ago for the young women to marry out of state. The couple became engaged Aug. 30 at Princess Place. Then news came through that same-sex marriage would be legal in Florida.
“I was at a loss for words, I was so happy for her,” Betty Hall said. “Mercedes’ father and I were actually going to take them to New York, so when we heard this, we were like, ‘OK, we’re doing this.’”
Mercedes Hall said that after she told her mother Betty that she wanted to marry a woman, Betty Hall, who is white and married to a black man, told her what she had to go through to marry Mercedes’ father in an environment not entirely accepting of interracial marriage.
“She just told me to be prepared,” Mercedes’ Hall said.
The period of back-and-forth between the courts and the state attorney general’s office, when same-sex marriage was approved through a court order but then put on hold for appeal, “was a headache, because of the simple fact that we didn’t know if it would (become legal) or if it wouldn’t,” Mercedes Hall said.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, who struck down a 2008 voter-approved gay marriage ban in August, issued a Jan. 1 order to Florida clerks of court to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Tuesday, Jan. 6, Flagler County Clerk of Court Gail Wadsworth said.
“Several couples have called, and we were in the process of calling them and saying our doors will be open for applications Tuesday morning,” Wadsworth said the evening of Monday, Jan. 5. Florida couples who apply for a license Tuesday morning, like Hall and Raulerson, could marry Friday, Jan. 9.
The Flagler County Clerk of Court website has an online marriage kiosk at apps.flaglerclerk.com/landmark/marriagekiosk. Couples must come into the records office at the courthouse at 1769 East Moody Blvd. in Bunnell to finalize the process, and there is a three-day waiting period between the application and the actual marriage.
The waiting period is waived for non-Florida residents and for those who have completed an approved premarital course. Information on approved courses and required marriage license fees and paperwork is available at the clerk’s website at flaglerclerk.com/marriageinfo.htm.
With the advent of marriage rights for gay couples in Florida, Wadsworth said, “Those things you and I take for granted will be theirs.”
“It’s time to give people the same rights that the rest of us have,” she said. “Let them have bedside rights. Let them buy homes together. It’s just time to let them be who they are.”
