'Good luck' prying off her wedding ring, gay attorney general tells US Supreme Court at DNC

CHICAGO − Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had a pointed message to any Republicans, or anyone on the U.S. Supreme Court for that matter, who might be thinking about reversing same-sex marriage protections.

"You can pry this wedding ring from my cold, dead, gay hand," said Nessel, ad-libbing a line to the prepared text for a short speech she gave in support of Vice President Kamala Harris' election at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

"And I'm retaining a lot of water, so good luck."

Nessel's speech came shortly after a series of clips that showed Harris, the Democratic nominee for president and a former prosecutor, sharply questioning bureaucrats and then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee as a U.S. senator from California.

Michigan's attorney general noted that, in 2011, Harris, then California's attorney general, refused to defend that state's same-sex marriage ban.

"She refused to argue that some families had fewer rights than other families," Nessel said. "It meant a lot. She was fighting for families like mine."

At the time, Michigan had a same-sex marriage ban as well. But it was overturned in June 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a handful of cases, including one from Michigan involving a Hazel Park couple, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, that same-sex marriage bans across the U.S. were unconstitutional. One of DeBoer and Rowse's chief lawyers was Nessel, who was then in private practice.

The Supreme Court earlier had found a same-sex marriage ban in California violated the Constitution. At least one conservative on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, has written about possibly revisiting and overriding the same-sex marriage decision.

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Nessel said she faced a similar circumstance to Harris' as attorney general when the U.S. Supreme Court, having a 6-3 conservative majority, in 2022 overturned the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision guaranteeing a right to an abortion. Michigan, at the time, had a longstanding − and long inactive − restrictive abortion law.

But Harris, who was then a senator, "had my back," Nessel said. "She reminded me, 'Protecting people's lives and defending their rights is our job." Nessel refused to enforce the 1931 law and Michigan would go on to enshrine a right to abortion in its state constitution in a referendum vote passed overwhelmingly later that year.

Nessel also touted Harris' record as attorney general, noting she went after polluters, sexual abusers and transnational gangs. "But what really stands out is when she stood up and protected her constituents' freedoms."

"We know when she takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, she's actually read it," said Nessel. And at a swipe at her opponent, Republican former President Donald Trump, who has been convicted on charges in a New York hush money trial and still faces other legal counts against him, she added, "Kamala knows you go from the court house to the White House, not the other way around."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Good luck' prying off her wedding ring, gay attorney general tells US Supreme Court at DNC