International Law

But the court said its notice had nothing to do with the gender of the men and everything to do with the location of their ceremony.

Marriage statutes in the District of Columbia (dating back to 1901) requires marriages to be celebrated within the jurisdictional and territorial boundaries of the city," Marie Robertson, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Superior Court, wrote CNN in an e-mail. "Both the officiant and the parties to the marriage must be physically present at the ceremony performed in the district."

Though video conferencing allows people to interact in new ways, such technology raises tricky questions about what it means to be present in a legal sense. Describing themselves as "accidental activists," Reed and Walkup now find themselves part of the new legal tangle.