In 2022 the LGBTQ+ community should probably have heeded the warning from the ultra-right wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after the Court had overturned Roe vs Wade and wiped out constitutional protections for abortion rights. At the time, Thomas shared his other extreme ideas that The Supreme Court must revisit and overrule past landmark decisions that legalized the right to obtain contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy and the right to same-sex marriage. At the time, we didn’t bother to listen to his radical personal views, thinking they could never happen. But then again, at the same time, we never thought the Country would ever re-elect The Orange Buffon.
We thought we were safe with Biden in The White House. In 2024, three states passed ballot measures protecting the right to marriage equality in their constitutions. Colorado recently guaranteed the right to marriage equality via their legislature. Even federally, a bipartisan push in 2022 saw the Respect For Marriage Act signed into law by President Biden, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and requiring any potential states without marriage equality laws to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples legally married in other states.
However, the number of states with these laws protecting same-sex marriage is still far too small. If Obergefell were to be overturned, Axios News reports that 35 states would immediately limit marriage equality through “trigger” laws. (In the United States, thirteen states, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri,North Dakota, Oklahoma South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, enacted trigger laws that automatically banned abortion in the first and second trimesters after Roe v. Wade were overturned)
Now under the present US Administration nothing good is secure and now we have to face the reality that the Orange Buffon will ALWAYS get his own way somehow or another. And if same sex-marrage is in his sight line, we are so going to have to organize a fight back like we have never done before. Panicking is not enough
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If Obergefell, and the Respect for Marriage Act were all overturned, this could create a scenario where:
There would be significant disparities in legal rights, particularly for same-sex couples traveling or moving between states. |
It remains uncertain if existing same sex marriages would still be validated, but experts advise from a logistical standpoint, undoing them would be extremely complicated
