Why same-sex marriage is on the ballot in 2024

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The Fight For Same-Sex Marriage Isn't Over. Far From It. By Philip Elliott Washington Correspondent, TIME Editor's Note: This edition of The D.C. Brief is a bit longer than usual. As such, this email to subscribers only includes the opening section. Click here or below to read the full column. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, Kelley Robinson was running the political shop at Planned Parenthood. Like so many abortion advocates and activists, she had seen the moment looming insidiously for so long. Even still, its arrival felt like both a personal and professional thwacking. It was a moment meriting despondency, but even taking the time for that seemed like an indulgence. “Up until Roe was overturned—even after the leak that they planned to overturn Roe came out—we polled folks across the country and they still did not believe it was true,” Robinson tells me. “They just would not believe that the Supreme Court in our lifetime would actually overturn such a fundamental right that had been the law of the land for over 40 years.” Robinson is now president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, and fears she's watching the same slow-moving car crash all over again. The most glaring sign of many came about on the day Roe fell. “In Clarence Thomas’ dissent, he says the quiet part out loud: next they are coming for Windsor and Obergefell and Lawrence,” she says, citing three rulings that unlocked a national right to same-sex marriage. Put another way: the foundational underpinning of LGBTQ rights is up there on conservatives’ list of targets, and they’re not exactly announcing it in a whisper. Before 2015, whether a same-sex couple could marry varied by state. With its 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court extended the federal right to marry to same-sex couples. It was a reflection of how much the country’s views of same-sex relationships had already shifted, and would continue to do so in the years that followed. But while the polls have moved one way, the composition of the Court has shifted in the other direction. If Roe could fall after 49 years in a 6-3 ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson case, there’s no reason to think Obergefell is any safer after less than a decade in action. It’s the legal earthquake that people like the lawyers at the Human Rights Campaign’s headquarters in Dupont Circle argue could come as soon as next year. Yet even some of those who worked for years to help secure a right now enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of couples refuse to believe it could be taken away. Same-sex marriage, they argue, is too popular, too engrained and accepted in American society. The Court wouldn’t dare. Or would they? Read the Story » Share this newsletter

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