10 years after marriage equality, queer couples are worried
Twelve years ago, on June 21, 2013, Paul Richmond and his partner, Dennis Nieto, boarded a bus to Washington, DC, from Ohio. The couple was one of the two dozen homosexual couples who had traveled to the capital of the Nation to participate in a large marriage ceremony on the sidewalk of the Supreme Court building.
“I remember standing there, holding [Dennis’] hands and just look him in the eye. Although there were so many people around us, he felt like us, “said Richmond, now 45 years old,” it was a special moment for us because it was something we had wanted for so long. We both grew in family situations where the type of life we lived was never an option. ”
At that time, same -sex couples could only marry in 12 states, Ohio was not one of them, and Washington, DC, the highest court was still considering several cases of matrimonial equality. Even when Richmond and Niekro exchanged votes, a group of protesters against same -sex marriage flanked the celebrants.
But five days later, the Supreme Court eliminated the law of defense of marriage, which had defined marriage between a man and a woman, in Windsor v. USA. Then, two years later, in 2015, the modern movement of homosexual rights obtained an even greater victory when the Supreme Court remained in Obergefell v. Hodges that same -sex couples had guaranteed the fundamental right to marriage throughout the country
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On June 26, 2025, it marks a decade from that ruling, which was praised by many defenders of matrimonial equality as a monumental turn point towards LGBTQ+ equality. Throughout the country, defenders of matrimonial equality Held on the streets. The main plaintiff in the case, Jim Obergefell, who had struggled to be recognized as a spouse in the death certificate of his late husband, said the ruling “affirms what millions of people in this country already know that they are true in their hearts: our love is the same.”
In many ways, the last 10 years have fulfilled the promise of the 2015 decision. Former President Joe Biden signed the Law of Respect for Marriage in 2022, formally repealing dressed and protecting the right to marry for same -sex and interracial couples. Most of Democrat and Republicans Now support marriage equality. It is estimated that 600,000 same -sex couples have married Obergefell, according to a New report Of the Williams Institute in UCLA.
But in 2025, things also feel very different.
“[The Trump administration] Hate has just been emboldened in a way that has really led him to the surface, ”said Richmond, speaking from his art studio in Monterey, California. He said that even in the progressive city, small exhibitions of strange expression, from a cross -colored cross -colored walk to an hour of drag queen tales in the local library, has met the new anger.
“Since then [Obergefell]I think many people have been trying to discover how to cancel it. We never think Roe v. Wade was going anywhere and then did. So anything could happen, “he added.
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This year, republican legislators in at least Six states He introduced resolutions to urge the Supreme Court to cancel its 2015 ruling. And in four other states, Republicans have introduced bills to create “pact marriages”, which are only open to female men unions.
President Donald Trump has not said much about same-sex marriage since he returned to office, instead focuses largely on an Anti-Trans agenda, which has threatened access to medical care for trans and adults, as well as the same access to sports, education, bathrooms and other parts of public life.
Under Trump’s impulse, the Republican party eliminated language of its 2024 platform that referred exclusively to marriage as a union between “a man and a woman.” But its administration has also been hostile to LGBTQ+ people in other ways, including thrusts for Find Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts; To retract Protections that cover LGBTQ+ people and for Censorship resources aimed at LGBTQ+ people.
Many queer couples care that the very existence of these invoices and resolutions are a Previous view in the future anti-LGBTQ larger than conservatives want to create under the second Trump administration. And there are reasons to worry that fundamental rights are much less solid than they seem.
Duncan, a 48 -year -old television writer in Los Angeles, met her now husband Ben in 2008, just when California began broadcasting her first marriage licenses for same -sex couples. The Supreme Court of the State had revoked its prohibition of same -sex marriage in the summer of 2008, and there was a brief window of four and a half months where homosexual couples could marry. But in November of that year California voters approved Proposition 8a voting measure that prohibited same -sex marriage. A federal court then annulled the measure, but it was not until 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled in Hollingsworth v. Perry That prop. 8 was unconstitutional.
“It was enlightening to recognize that rights could be delivered and then become a political problem and then take off,” Duncan said. As head of the green card from Canada, he asked to be identified only by his first name. “That was largely our first experience with gay marriage. It was like ‘Ok, this is just one thing that is never permanent'”.
In the decade since the decisions of Obergefell and Perry, that feeling of impermanence has not completely disappeared. Even as states as California, Hawaii and Colorado He approved his own voting measures in 2024 to protect the right of people from all genres to marry under state law, about 80% of couples surveyed by the Williams Institute in UCLA Last year he felt very or something worried that the decision would be revoked.
Even Obergefell himself, the former plaintiff, feels that the hostile political climate eclipses this year’s anniversary.
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“I never expected in 10 years that I worried that Obergefell was revoked, that he would be concerned with the loss of marriage equality, that I would worry so many rights that they were removed,” he told them Axios This month.
This concern has increased in recent years after the conservative judges of the Supreme Court have indicated interest in revoking Obergefell’s decision. In 2020, after rejecting an appeal of Kim Davis, a former Kentucky employee who rejected a same -sex couple who was looking for a marriage license, Judge Clarence Thomas wrote that the court created “ruinous consequences for religious freedom” that could only fix, specifically naming Obergefell.
“Obergefell allows the courts and governments to mark the religious adherents who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman like fans, which makes his religious concerns much easier to rule out,” Thomas added.
Another warning occurred in 2022, when the Supreme Court revoked federal rights over abortion in Dobbs v decision. Jackson, what happens almost 50 years of precedents and revoked the previous ruling of the court. Thomas wrote in a concurrent opinion in Dobbs that the court “Should reconsider” His precedents in Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell, three cases that involve the rights of Americans to privacy and equal protection, and in particular the right to use contraception, participate in a sexual behavior of the same sex and a marriage between same -sex people, respectively.
“We have the duty to” correct the error “established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote.
The growing propensity of conservative judges to examine whether certain rights are deeply rooted in the “history and tradition” of the country is a loser game for civil rights debates that once considered, such as those in matters of abortion and LGBTQ, legal experts say.
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“They do not make mistakes, if the court follows the very narrow originalist approach they did in Dobbs, then same-sex marriage is vulnerable,” Scott Skinner-Thompson, associate professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Colorado, told News themezone, whose work is focused on LGBTQ problems.
Around the country, 32 states It still has a constitutional amendment or the prohibition at the state level of same -sex marriage, which often remains in books because it is too Labor to eliminate them or are a low priority for state legislatures. Queer people in these states would still be protected by the law of respect for marriage, unless Congress repeals it. It is a risk that some are not willing to take.
Heather Clark, a 28 -year -old accountant, lives in Austin, Texas, a state that still Define marriage Between a man and a woman. Clark said that after reading Thomas’s opinion in Dobbs, Clark and his wife, Claire, they decided to ascend their wedding earlier than planned. The couple married two months after Dobbs, in August 2022, giving their friends and family only one month of warning to attend a small ceremony in Texas Hill Country.
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“I’m so happy to be married to [Claire] But at the same time, it is a bit bittersweet because we couldn’t have everything we had planned, “said Clark.” We read the decision and begin to feel a bit worried. “They said that the state in which they lived was in their calculations.
Claire is also a trans woman, so the couple is more immediately concerned about the wave of Anti-Trans legislation at the state level. Texas recently approved a law that reflects Trump’s Executive orderstating that the State recognizes two immutable sexes, men and women, which has complicated Claire’s access to the documentation that accurately reflects its gender identity.
The uncertainty of the moment makes Clark feel as if they are in a perpetual “waiting period.” They feel far from their initial sense of hope and freedom when Obergefell’s decision was reduced just when they left as queer at age 19.
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“He felt that everything was going up there,” they said. They still have a photo in Snapchat with a filter of equal marriage that took that day in 2015. “Now, all those who know are in a mode of defense. It seems that this should be a triumphant occasion, but it does not necessarily feel that way.”
Legal experts predict that there could be more challenges for marriage equality in the future. Like plain Some states pass amendments To codify same sex marriage in state constitutions, conservatives have tried to forge certain exceptions.
In the 2023 case, 303 Creative v. ElenisThe Supreme Court opened the door to discrimination against same -sex couples when they ruled that a website designer who refused to make a wedding website for same -sex couples due to their Christian beliefs, although he was never asked to do a single wedding website, had the right of the first amendment to do so, under protections for freedom of expression.
The case is one in a series of recent cases that involve rights of the first amendment and religious freedoms, an argument that can give a license to greater discrimination.
“I think that the initial and more prominent battles will continue to use expressive freedom arguments to isolate people who want to have anything to do with same-sex marriage,” said Skinner-Thompson.
Meanwhile, some couples said that the increase in Anti-LGBTQ policy And the unpredictability of the future is the exact reason to celebrate queer love now.
Cassie Kendrick, a 28 -year -old trans woman who lives in Suwanee, Georgia, and her wife had initially considered abandoning her Atlanta suburb by a more friendly state with the transmission of 2024: by then, the state legislature controlled by Georgia had approved a prohibition of the prohibition of gender care for the transmission minor The ticket of the prohibition of the plans for the prohibition of the prohibition of the plans for the prohibition of the prohibition of the plans of the prohibition of the prohibition of the prohibition that on Saturday of the prohibition of the prohibition of the plans of the prohibition of the prohibition of the prohibition of the care of the prohibition of the plans of the prohibition of the plans to prohibit the prohibition of the prohibition of the plans of the prohibition. adults And in April, a new Religious Liberty Bill Signed by law by Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp has gone worried defenders Open the door to discrimination against queer and trans people.
“We had talked about canceling our wedding plans and a court leak and using the money to leave Georgia,” Kendrick said. “But I just didn’t want to feel that [Trump] I had won. So we had the wedding of our dreams and it was all we always wanted. “
During December 2024 Ceremony, Kendrick was covered with a dress equipped with a hood to settle his role as a master of dungeons in the fantasy board game Dungoons and Dragons while his wife, a seamstress, sewed his own dress. The two women walked through the hall to the lesbian anthem of Chappell Roan “Supernova de Vino Red” and had an episcopal priest officiated their wedding.
“We had a magical moment in which we were surrounded by nature and the people we love,” Kendrick said. “That kind of thing would have been unthinkable more than 10 years ago.”