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'We don't know what the future will hold': Same-sex couples concerned about the future of marriage equality

Since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, overall support for same-sex marriage has grown, with 68% of Americans now supporting it — up from 58% in 2015.
"We don't know what the future will hold': Same-sex couples concerned about the future of marriage equality
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Ten years ago, Gideon Levinson and Jacob Rosenblum each wondered if their future would ever include being able to marry a same-sex partner.

Now, they're planning their wedding together.

It's possible because of the Supreme Court's monumental 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S.

"That ruling really just made me realize that I could just have a boring, normal marriage and life, which is kind of all I'd ever wanted," said Levinson.

Thursday marks 10 years since that Supreme Court ruling.

Since that decision, a recent Gallup poll shows overall support for same-sex marriage has grown, with 68% of Americans now supporting it — up from 58% in 2015.

But the divide between Democrats and Republicans has widened over the past three years. Just four in ten Republicans say marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law with the same rights as traditional marriages.

"There's a temporary partisan divide, but that happens so often as the pendulum begins to swing to and from equality," said Jonathan Lovitz, the senior vice president of campaigns and communications at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. "There's always worry, but there's always a lot of pride and strength in the community to fight back against any of those worries."

This year, lawmakers in at least nine states have introduced measures aimed at taking away same-sex couples' right to marriage. Currently, federal law would supersede these efforts.

However, conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have both criticized the Obergefell ruling and called on the bench to revisit the case.

In response to a question about President Trump's stance on same-sex marriage, a White House spokesperson told Scripps News Group that President Trump is "honored to serve all Americans."

The White House did not respond directly to the president's stance on marriage equality.

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In another sign of growing pushback, earlier this month the Southern Baptist delegates endorsed a ban on same-sex marriage at the church's national meeting.

Levinson and Rosenblum have observed the tides shifting, and following November's election, they decided not to wait until their August wedding date to get married.

A week after the election, they got legally married in Colorado.

"Just knowing how much can change and how quickly, we were like ... why take a legal gamble when we were already planning to get married?" Rosenblum said. "So, it was kind of a legal insurance policy to make sure that we exercised our right to get married while we still had it."

They're not alone in their worries.

Almost 80% of married same-sex couples said they were concerned about Obergefell being overturned, according to a survey from last year from Williams Institue at the UCLA School of Law.

"No one feels like anything that has been decided will stay decided," Levinson said. "It feels like everything is continuously up in the air. ... We don't know what the future will hold, even though something seemed set in stone so recently."

There are no cases before the Supreme Court currently that seek to challenge same-sex marriage.

If that were to change, LGBTQ advocates point to the Respect for Marriage Act as a backstop.

That was bipartisan legislation passed in 2022 that in part added protections for same-sex marriages, but it does not stop states from banning same-sex marriage if Obergefell were to be overturned.

Lovitz sees the growing pushback but is optimistic about the future of marriage equality.

"They're welcome to keep trying (to fight same-sex marriage)," Lovitz said. "But we're going to keep fighting and we're going to keep winning, because as marriage equality affirmed 10 years ago today, love always wins."