🏳️🌈🏺⚖️ Current Court — Where We Stand
🏳️🌈🏺2-Gay in History⚖️🏳️🌈
The Current Court — Where We Stand
In June 2015 the Obergefell decision made marriage equality the law of the nation, but Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses on religious grounds. It was a stunt but one that won her notoriety.
This series has tried to highlight that the arc bends both ways and that progress isn’t inevitable. Every win in these pages was followed by someone working to undo it. So where are we now?
Last year, Kim Davis asked the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell outright. Her petition borrowed the exact language used to overturn Roe: the precedent was “egregiously wrong,” substantive due process a “legal fiction.” The Court declined to hear it because Davis’s case was a poor vehicle.
But it will find. In 2025, at least nine states introduced measures challenging marriage equality. The Southern Baptist Convention named overturning Obergefell a priority. Justices Thomas and Alito have both said openly that the case should be reconsidered
Meanwhile, the fight has moved. Last term, in Mahmoud v. Taylor parents gained the right to opt their children out of LGBTQ lesson plans and in Skrmetti, the Court upheld a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors. This term it struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. Next fall they will hear St Mary’s v. Roy which seeks to demand public funding for religious schools that discriminate against queer parents and kids. And as I write this, two cases on transgender students in school sports are days away from a decision (Little v. Hecox & West Virginia v. B.P.J.)
The landmark precedents still stand but things aren’t going well, using religious liberty and free speech to carve out who the law no longer has to protect.
But there is a safety limit. The Respect for Marriage Act (2022) means even if Obergefell fell, existing marriages would still be recognized nationwide. We are not where we were in 1986, we won’t lose it all just yet. But just like Roe, a country split in two may be near.
Progress was never a straight line, and every time we get complacent, we risk the rug getting pulled out.
UPDATE: On June 30, the Court ruled 6-3 in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, upholding state bans on transgender girls in school sports. Kavanaugh wrote it as a “father and a coach” Trans people need not apply under Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause, but only “biological females”. It opens the door for so much more as Title VII logic should have been the same as in Bostock—preventing employment discrimination—but the conservative justices inexplicably claimed that it’s completely different. 27 states now legally ban trans-girls from sports with more and worse to come.
