WNBA player Natasha Cloud, Guard for the Washington mystics, revealed that she married long-time girlfriend and professional softball player Aleshia Ocasio last year in October. The sad reason it was done in secret was due to the fear that Trump would get re-elected and it would be the only chance they would get to marry each other.
This fear was ignited by the announcement that Amy Comey Barrett was going to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat after her death, and Cloud, along with the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, worried what that meant for their rights in the future.
Amy Cony Barret both then and now has a history of being outspokenly homophobic, including but not limited to signing a letter in 2015 addressed to Catholic bishops that detailed her beliefs that marriage and family were founded on the commitment of a man and a woman, and in 2016 defending the dissenting justices of the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which gave equal rights of marriage to LGBTQ+ individuals.
Cloud and Ocasio got engaged in 2019, sharing the news on social media with their Instagram followers. Ocasio captioned hers "To being on #Cloud9"
Cloud captioning hers "Loving you is all I know how to do."
Tori Jameson, a queer non-binary pastor in St Louis Missouri started offering “pop-up elopements” to the local queer community to get married while they still had the chance. It was a mass marriage event on October 11th and 15th 2020 where sixteen couples were married. Jameson admits to them magazine that they thought only “A couple of folks” would show up, but then a “bunch of volunteers just showed up”.
The couple hinted to their secret ceremony over the holidays, posting a family photo to Instagram cuddled up next to a tree, signed “The Clouds.”, but this is the first time it’s been confirmed that the two are married.