I thought, naively it turns out, we might get to a point in my lifetime where we stop saying same-sex marriage. Where we just say marriage.
Where a qualifier that points out the sex of two people in a union is so utterly, preposterously unrelated to the spirit and beauty and point of that union that we’d eventually realize it’s the equivalent of putting air quotes around something and we’d stop saying it altogether.
Now I wonder if same-sex marriage will become outlawed in my lifetime.
When the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade last month, Justice Clarence Thomas argued in his concurring opinion that the court “should reconsider” some of its past rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges — the 2015 ruling that made marriage equality the law of the land.
In the Obergefell ruling, the Supreme Court declared that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional.
Thomas dissented from the 2015 ruling, as did Justice Samuel Alito. In 2020, when the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Kim Davis — the Kentucky county clerk who was sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — Thomas and Alito issued a four-page statement denouncing Obergefell.
“By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas wrote at the time. Alito joined the opinion.
(A novel constitutional right!)
If Obergefell is overturned, same-sex marriage would become illegal in at least 25 states, and would likely become illegal in seven others, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, PolitiFact reports.
In an attempt to preemptively protect marriage equality from that fate, the House of Representatives just passed the Respect for Marriage Act. The measure aims to formally repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, a law signed by President Bill Clinton that defines a spouse as “a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife” and that defines marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.”
One hundred and fifty seven Republicans voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, and it’s expected to face an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate. As of this writing, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, refused to state his position on the bill.
We can debate the likelihood of the measure passing. We can debate the likelihood of the Supreme Court overturning Obergefell v. Hodges. We can attempt to project ourselves into the future and pretend to peer into the minds of a bunch of justices and legislators and the strategists who no doubt guide their every move.
But my mind and my heart are plagued by the right now.
By the married couples who are watching as their rights, their lives, their families, their love, their devotion, their vows and fights and makeups and vacations and triumphs and inside jokes and anniversaries and mundane errands and shared secrets and safe places and soft landings are being debated. Debated for legitimacy. Debated for legality. Debated for longevity.
Simply because of their sex. Simply because the person who made their hearts crack open and take a leap of faith and commit to a lifetime of figuring things out together happened to be the same sex.
My mind and heart are plagued by the young people who identify as LGBTQ, watching as their rights, their lives, their future families are called into question. Watching as so-called public servants sit in dialogue and judgment of something as fundamental and sacrosanct as who they love and what they’re allowed to do about it.
It’s dangerous and it’s wrong. It’s morally wrong, with LGBTQ youth more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. It’s strategically wrong, with some 70% of Americans supporting marriage equality.
And it’s the wrong topic, as the world literally burns and gun violence plagues our every endeavor and a vaccine-resistant virus continues to infect us and a war wages on in Ukraine and inflation climbs and young people tell us they’re in crisis.
And love is what we’re debating. Love.
Because a couple of justices, sitting on a court determined to yank America backwards, might just go there. Might just make it even harder for LGBTQ youth to grow up in this country. Might just decide to throw a proverbial grenade into the homes of the countless families who had the audacity to take their country up on its promise: that we’re all created equal, that we have certain unalienable rights, that marriages don’t need air quotes around them.
Might just add more chaos to a broken, battered nation.
The hate and the fear and the cynicism are loud right now. Our only choice is to make the love even louder.
