Obergefell v. Hodges
Ten Years After Obergefell, We’re Reminded of What Is Possible
This piece is written by Logan Casey, MAP’s Director of Policy Research.
June 26 marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which extended marriage to same-sex couples nationwide.
On this day, it’s important to both honor the tremendous impact this decision has had on the lives of millions of LGBTQ people and their families, and to highlight the onerous work and sustained commitment that brought us from the first marriage ban in 1973 to marriage equality in 2015.
At the same time, we are mourning a new, difficult, and devastating loss at the U.S. Supreme Court in Skrmetti, where the Court failed in its duty to protect transgender youth, their families, and their doctors from political interference in deeply personal, medical decisions. This loss is especially painful as it comes on the heels of over five years of escalating political attacks on LGBTQ people — especially transgender youth — and marks a lost opportunity for the Court to stem the tide of these discriminatory attacks.
Amid these ongoing attacks and the devastating decision in Skrmetti, for many of us, it may feel impossible to celebrate — whether for Pride, for the anniversary of Obergefell, or for the many wins our movement nonetheless continues to earn through hard work and resolve. As a trans person living through these times, I often experience this tension myself.
We are living through what feels like unprecedented times. During the last five years alone, we’ve seen records break year after year for the number of anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures, leading to a dramatic shift in the policy landscape nationwide for LGBTQ people — and especially transgender people.
We’ve seen wins, but also numerous losses in state and federal courts across the country, including, most recently, at the highest court in the land. And soon, we will also face tests directly at the ballot box.
We’ve seen a benign lack of understanding about LGBTQ people exploited and weaponized by bad actors promoting misinformation and disinformation about our communities. We’ve been subjected to increasingly dehumanizing rhetoric about the alleged threat we pose to morality itself — including from the highest halls of government.
But one of the reasons it remains important to celebrate, or at least observe, anniversaries like Obergefell is because it reminds us of where we’ve been — and what is possible.
We, as a community and as a movement, have been here before. The decision in Obergefell didn’t happen overnight; it was decades in the making. And in those decades, we also lived through losses at state houses and in the courts and at the ballot box; through being misunderstood and maligned by disinformation about our families and our lives; and through harmful rhetoric and hostile administrations alike.
We have been here before. We know how to do this work, how to recover, and how to win these fights. We know who we are, and that we are not alone. And that is worth celebrating.
