BOISE, Idaho — While visiting Flying M Coffee, one of their favorite downtown Boise haunts, Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln pretended to go to the gift shop before returning to her table with Van Beechler-Lincoln carrying a personalized flipbook that told the story of their love. On the table between them was a ship in a bottle that Van’s friend had made, with a ring hanging from it.

When Van finished paging through the flipbook and looked up, Chelsea was down on one knee. The baristas were playing the hit song “Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, which Chelsea had requested.

That moment in their lives took place in October 2015, a year after a federal judge in Idaho ruled the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. A few months before the couple’s coffeehouse proposal, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages across the country with its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Since those landmark rulings, some 2,200 same-sex couples have married in Idaho, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Now, a conservative effort within the state seeks to invalidate each of them.

Ten years after the court decisions, a Republican-led resolution in the Idaho House aims to bring these marriages back into the spotlight, asking the nation’s high court to reconsider its decision. A reversal by the Supreme Court, which would require a new case to reach the high court, also could prompt a challenge to Idaho’s court decision.

The new court precedents mirror a change in public opinion about the unions: In 2006, a constitutional amendment in Idaho that banned same-sex marriage passed with 63% approval. In 2022, 49% of Idahoans polled by the Idaho Statesman and SurveyUSA said they supported the marriages.

Idaho trails the nation in support for the unions, with 63% of U.S. adults saying they support their legalization, according to polling from the Pew Research Center.

But perceptions of same-sex marriages are inflected by partisanship. The Statesman’s polling found just 34% of Republicans supported the marriages, while 78% of Democrats and 62% of independents did.

Though it lacks the force of law, the Idaho resolution supported by Republicans has distressed LGBTQ+ families, who feel that politicians have targeted them, according to testimony at a House committee.

“We just want to live our lives like everyone else,” Chelsea said in an interview with the Statesman.

House Joint Memorial 1 — which passed the Idaho House Jan. 27 — calls the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision an “illegitimate overreach” and asks the justices to restore the “natural definition of marriage.” It defines that as between one man and one woman. It was pushed by a Massachusetts-based organization called MassResistance, which opposes not only same-sex marriage but all LGBTQ+ relationships.

Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, sponsored the legislation. She told a House committee that its purpose is “to affirm our state authority to regulate marriage.” Her bill has not yet had a hearing in the Senate, and committee chairman Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, did not respond to a question from a reporter about whether he would give it one.

Beyond its symbolic meaning, marriage confers over 1,000 legal rights, from employment benefits to medical visitation rights, government entitlements and tax benefits.

“It is a piece of paper, but it’s a really important one,” Chelsea said.

“Denying those rights and benefits because you disagree with that union, I think, is the very definition of government overreach,” Rep. Todd Achilles, D-Boise, said during debate on the resolution on the House floor.

After the proposal at Flying M, Chelsea and Van took engagement photos just blocks away at the Idaho Capitol. Despite the challenges, they want to live in Idaho, where family is nearby.

The couple met in Democratic political organizing in the Treasure Valley, became friends and started dating in 2013. Van was previously chair of the Idaho Democratic Party and helped start the party’s Queer Caucus, while Chelsea has served as a national committeewoman. Neither are still involved with the party. Van has degrees in art and psychology, while Chelsea is working toward her Ph.D. in organizational leadership.

When an Idaho judge legalized same-sex marriages in the state, the two helped throw a party at the Ada County Courthouse. After their engagement in 2015, Chelsea recalls making plans for their wedding, and the moment in each conversation with vendors or wedding service companies when she informed them that it would be a same-sex wedding.

“It was strange to consistently call and be like, ‘We’re two women, we’re getting married, and have that little pause of, like, are they going to hang up? Are they going to shout things?’ ” she said.

One vendor in Canyon County turned them down, Chelsea said. Idaho law does not protect residents from sexual orientation discrimination, and Republicans have blocked making changes to the law for two decades.

Chelsea and Van have two children — one age 6, the other 2 — who were born through in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination. Because Chelsea gave birth to both children, Van told the Statesman she is worried that undoing their legal marriage in Idaho could jeopardize her shared custody of the couple’s children.

“The threat on any level of losing parental rights to my kids kills me,” Van said through tears. “I don’t know if I’d be able to recover.”

Republicans cite religious objections to LGBTQ+ relationships

In Scott’s presentation of the resolution on the House floor, she listed recent Supreme Court cases where business owners refused to do business with same-sex couples over religious objections. The Obergefell ruling was an effort by the court to create a right where none existed before, she said.

“People have strongly held religious beliefs, and that is a right that’s in our Constitution that’s being violated,” Scott said.

Other Republican lawmakers said their opposition to the marriages was a moral issue. Rep. Clint Hostetler, R-Twin Falls, said the country has “drifted” away from viewing traditional marriage as the “vital fabric” of society, discussed the benefits of a “nuclear” family and recited Christian scripture.

In the children’s playroom at Chelsea and Van’s home stands a 3-foot-tall statue of Yoda from Star Wars, a castle by the window sill and colorful bean bag pillows.

“This is where we do our 45-minute pre-bath routine of ‘the floor is lava,’ dance mode,” Chelsea said. “Try to get the wiggles out. They still splash everywhere, but we try.”

In their own home, their family lives as purposefully as others do, Van said.

“Every decision we’ve made was intentional when we were building a family,” she said. “The biggest misconception is that it’s not the same, that we don’t wake up and choose each other every day — that we don’t have to navigate school drop-offs and child care pick-ups, and the never-ending question of: ‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’”

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