After 10 years of marriage equality, the fight continues for LGBTQ+ rights

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3 days ago

A lot of queer people can tell you exactly where they were at 10 a.m. on Friday, June 26, 2015.
That was the moment the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that grants same-sex couples marriage equality. For many – me included – it was a dream come true. Growing up gay in rural North Carolina in the sixties and seventies, when a large majority of states still made same-sex relationships a felony, the idea of same-sex couples marrying seemed so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. Today, thanks in part to the organization I now run, Lambda Legal (which was co-counsel in Obergefell), it is the law of the land. More than 600,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S. have tied the knot since then according to the Williams Institute, 'double the 390,000 who were married in June 2015 when Obergefell was decided.'
Ten years later, the picture is much darker.
Today, we are seeing a massive attack on the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Since 2022, an astounding 1,903 bills aimed at restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ people have been introduced – at least one in each of our 50 state legislatures. 220 have become law in 27 states.
Obergefell and its protections are in danger of being rolled back. In 2023, Tennessee enacted a law that allows government officials to refuse to marry same-sex couples. In 2025, five state legislatures (Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota) considered bills calling upon the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell. (Idaho's resolution passed.) The Southern Baptist Convention (America's second-largest Christian denomination) recently voted to pursue a legal strategy to reverse Obergefell modeled on the successful effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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If a challenge to Obergefell makes it to the Supreme Court, it will find at least two friendly faces there. Justice Samuel Alito has repeatedly called for its reversal. And in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas went even further: 'In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [which gave us the right to birth control in 1965], Lawrence [which decriminalized same-sex relationships in 2003] and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous, the Court has a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents.' On the bench of the highest court in our land sits a man who wants to make us criminals again.
How did we get here?
It wasn't by accident: it's part of a well-funded effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights nationwide. Led by right-wing extremist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom ('ADF,' which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed a 'hate group'), a concerted effort to roll back the rights of LGBTQ+ people has been underway for many years. This network of right-wing extremist legal groups – including the ADF, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice, the First Liberty Institute, and the Becket Fund – had a combined budget of $231 million in 2023. By contrast, pro-LGBTQ+ legal groups – such as Lambda Legal, GLADLaw, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the ACLU LGBTQ+ Rights Project, the Transgender Law Center, and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund – had a combined budget of $75 million in the same year. Anti-LGBTQ+ forces are outspending pro-LGBTQ+ forces by a factor of 3:1, so it's no surprise we are on the defensive.
The LGBTQ+ movement finds itself at a conflicted moment on this tenth anniversary of marriage equality – feeling both celebratory and concerned about Obergefell, particularly in the wake of the recent ruling in in our Skrmetti case with the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee. The decision upheld Tennessee's ban on the right of trans young people to access the health care they need.
The world I was born into in 1963 – one where in all 50 states but one (Illinois), same-sex relations were a crime – was changed through litigation, including Lambda Legal's Lawrence v. Texas victory at the Supreme Court in 2003, which decriminalized same-sex relationships nationwide. Will the courts champion the cause of equality as they have done in some landmark cases like Lawrence and Obergefell or continue to bring setbacks to equality as they did in Skrmetti? We may be about to find out.Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
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This article originally appeared on Advocate: After 10 years of marriage equality, the fight continues for LGBTQ+ rights