Same-Sex Marriage and the Hope That is America
In less than a decade, public opinion of same-sex marriage shifted dramatically in its favor and radically altered the course of LGBTQ civil rights in America forever. As we exit Pride Month and enter the month of our country’s independence, we look back at the watershed issue of same-sex marriage and how it led to freedoms once thought impossible for the LGBTQ community.
Pride Month means a lot of things to a lot of people in the LGBTQ community. For many, Pride Month represents the ability to live one’s life freely, openly, and unapologetically as the person they were born to be – freedom in its purest form.
The ceaseless struggle for LGBTQ rights in the United States is an important chapter in American civil rights history. From the forgotten protests at The Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles in 1967; the consequential Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969; the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to public office; and the murders of trans-man Brandon Teena in 1993 and gay student Matthew Shepard in 1998, which galvanized efforts to pass federal hate-crime legislation, the struggle for civil rights for the LGBTQ community in America is immeasurable.
As we exit Pride Month and enter the month of our country’s independence, we look back with a particular interest at the same-sex marriage debate. In less than a decade, public opinion of same-sex marriage shifted dramatically in its favor and radically altered the discourse surrounding the issue. A once demoralizing struggle for the LGBTQ community, the legalization of same-sex marriage became a watershed moment for LGBTQ civil rights in the U.S. and embodied the hope and freedom that is America.
On Tuesday, February 24, 2004, at 10:43 AM Eastern time, President George W. Bush marched into The Roosevelt Room of The White House. The look on his face was solemn, his body language subdued. Were there significant developments in the War on Terror? Was the president about to announce an end to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Did the U.S. finally capture Usama Bin Laden? It was none of these. Rather, it was a problem considered so important that the president held a nationally televised press conference and pushed for a constitutional amendment to help solve. That problem: same-sex marriage.
In November of 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage. Many conservatives felt that it would not be the last and that many other states would follow, eventually leading to same-sex marriage becoming the law of the land. “If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America,” demanded President Bush at his press conference. “Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country.”
Amid an election year where many felt his incumbency was vulnerable due to the intensifying war in Iraq and staggering economy, President Bush seized on same-sex marriage as a political tool to rally his base and ensure his re-election in November. The animus paid off.
But the president was not alone in his disapproval of same-sex marriage. The public was on his side, with 60% of Americans against same-sex marriage and only 31% for it. A CBS News Exit Poll of the 2004 presidential election found 22% of respondents picked the Bush campaign’s emphasis on moral values – an issue that, to many political pundits’ surprise, trumped other more pressing issues such as terrorism and the economy – as the main issue that won their vote. Amongst many other battles for LGBTQ rights in the United States, the fight for legalizing same-sex marriage became a demoralizing and oftentimes hopeless struggle the community thought they would never win.
In 1996, just eight years before President Bush’s proposal of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, President Bill Clinton, who was also in the midst of a re-election campaign, found himself in a somewhat similar controversy regarding same-sex marriage. Although Clinton had campaigned harder than any president before to raise support from the gay community, he was adamant in his belief that marriage is defined as a union between one man and one woman. At the time, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage.
Despite the overwhelming support against legalizing same-sex marriage, Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia introduced legislation to counteract the genuine possibility of every state being forced to recognize same-sex marriage ceremonies performed in other states due to the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause.
Barr’s The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) swiftly made its way through Congress with veto-proof bi-partisan support. Clinton publicly declared the legislation as “unnecessary” and “divisive.” Despite his supposed opposition, Clinton signed DOMA into law less than two months before his successful re-election.
DOMA federally defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, allowed states the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages conducted lawfully in other states, and prevented same-sex marriages from federal benefits, including the joint filing of tax returns and claiming Social Security survivors benefits.
Ever since the passage of DOMA, matters regarding the LGBTQ community such as same-sex civil unions and marriage, adoption of children by same-sex couples, workplace discrimination, and serving openly in the military became recurrent issues for politicians, mainly conservatives, during every election cycle. But the hostility of the Bush Administration in the 2000s, and the constant threat of legislation to limit LGBTQ rights both locally and nationally, motivated the LGBTQ community to finally take off their gloves and fight back like never before.
Unlike prior generations, where simple assumptions about one’s sexual orientation could mean social and professional ostracization, members of the LGBTQ community came out of the closet. They decided to live their lives openly and without pretense amongst a more tolerant generation. The LGBTQ community took back the narrative written for them by those who wanted to make sure they remained second-class citizens and nothing more than political cannon fodder.
The LGBTQ community mobilized grassroots and national support to advance equal rights for their community and leveraged their newfound political strength by electing allies to office. LGBTQ representation increased in pop culture through groundbreaking reality shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, talk shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show, hit scripted television shows like Queer As Folk and The L Word, and critically acclaimed movies like Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica.
The LGBTQ community was no longer seen as lascivious members of society that many erroneously and purposefully painted them out to be. They were our friends, family, co-workers, classmates, and public figures. They were no different than their straight brothers and sisters, nor did they want to be treated differently, just equally.
Although there was increased public and political support for LGBTQ rights in the 2000s, it still wasn’t enough. In 2008, America elected its first African American president in Barack Obama, symbolizing a break from the demagoguery of the Bush-era that defined the 2000s. But as Obama easily won California, the most populous state in the union also rejected same-sex marriage by voting Yes on Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage. Passed with just 52.24% of the vote, the narrow victory for opponents of same-sex marriage mirrored the national consensus, which was 51%. A demoralizing loss, the fight for same-sex marriage legalization only strengthened for the LGBTQ community. The community’s struggle for equality would finally be realized with the help of the newly elected Commander-In-Chief and his receptive administration.
In 1996, when asked by a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper if he favored same-sex marriage, then candidate for Illinois state senate Barack Obama said, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” Twelve years later, presidential candidate Barack Obama told evangelical pastor Rick Warren during an interview, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian – for me – for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
For Obama, the political reality at the time could not afford him to be an outright supporter of gay marriage. But for him to inflict change for the LGBTQ community, he had to be elected first, even if that meant campaigning on a lie. In his book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, Obama’s former top advisor David Axelrod explained, “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union.’ . . . Having prided himself on forthrightness, though, Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position.”
Like with many politicians seeking national office, it was of political necessity for Obama to mirror the national trends regarding same-sex marriage. During his candidacy in 2008, only 39% of the public favored same-sex marriage. Four years later, when Obama sought re-election, public support for same-sex marriage had increased to 48%. In 2012, Obama finally made public his longstanding support for same-sex marriage and made championing it an important part of his second-term agenda.
By 2012, the dominoes began to fall on anti-LGBTQ legislation. The Obama administration had already successfully lobbied for the end to “Don’t’ Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy which forbade LGBTQ service members from serving openly.
In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment. . . . The history of DOMA’s enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, a dignity conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence.”
Legalities regarding California’s Proposition 8 were found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which allowed same-sex marriages to resume in the state. Many states seized upon these rulings and passed legislation that legalized same-sex marriage. Despite the piecemeal success of same-sex marriage on the state level, same-sex marriage remained elusive nationally, and many legal challenges by opponents followed with varying degrees of success.
By 2015, public support for same-sex marriage was at an all-time high of 55%. With an ally in the White House, many in the LGBTQ community became more hopeful than ever that the tide had turned in favor for the national legalization of same-sex marriage. In Pride Month that same year, the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges finally legalized same-sex marriage. The court ruled that marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. Same-sex marriage, something that many in the LGBTQ community couldn’t even conceptualize at one point, was now the law of the land.
In a span of just 11 years, from a president who used the Constitution as a threat to ban same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court who used the Constitution to allow same-sex marriage, the LGBTQ community finally achieved its long-held dream of true marriage equality in all 50 states.
When it comes to same-sex marriage, there is no going back. In 2021, support for same-sex marriage reached an all-time high, with 70% of Americans supporting it, up 10% since legalization in 2015. In another win for the community, the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County established that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited workplace discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. Despite these successes, the LGBTQ community’s fight for equality still faces opposition.
Recent years have seen political conservatives seize upon a new issue of contention with the LGBTQ community in the form of “bathroom bills.” These bills are aimed at preventing transgender individuals from using bathrooms different from their sex at birth. Like the same-sex marriage debate, “bathroom bills” have been exclusively legislated in states with no national consensus. The Supreme Court recently decided not to hear a case that aimed to prevent transgender students from using bathrooms that matched their gender identity. Many expected this case to be a seminal moment in the national bathroom debate, but it will have to wait for now.
Even though same-sex couples can adopt children in all 50 states, laws have been passed in several states that have been viewed as thinly-veiled attempts to discriminate against same-sex couples. A 2021 Supreme Court decision upheld a private Catholic agency’s decision to not consider LGBTQ foster parents due to same-sex marriage being antithetical to Catholic dogma. The thin line between religious liberty and civil rights is something that will be up for debate in coming years when involving matters inherent to the LGBTQ community.
True equality for the LGBTQ community in the United States has yet to be achieved. Delivering remarks at a recent engagement, President Joe Biden admitted, “For all of our progress, there are many States in which LGBTQ+ individuals still lack protections for fundamental rights and dignity in hospitals, schools, public accommodations, and other spaces.” Biden promised that his administration “will not rest until full equality for LGBTQ+ Americans is finally achieved and codified into law.”
President Biden has made good on his campaign promise to appoint members of the LGBTQ community to key positions in his Cabinet and has made sure their voices and perspectives are heard. Roughly 14% of Biden’s 1,500 federal agency appointees identify as LGBTQ, in what many see as the most pro-LGBTQ administration in United States history. Current Transportation Secretary and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg became the highest-ranking, openly gay person to serve in a presidential Cabinet position. Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine became the first transgender person confirmed by the Senate for a presidential Cabinet position. The once lone civil rights struggle for the LGBTQ community is now a concerted effort backed by strong political support.
Even though America has made great strides in advancing LGBTQ rights, the same cannot be said for the rest of the world when viewed outside of our rainbow-colored American prism. As of 2021, 71 countries have outlawed homosexuality and have made it punishable by jail time or, in some cases, death. LGBTQ individuals in these countries are forced to live invisible lives out of fear of reprisal from their inconsiderate societies and unsympathetic governments. As a result of these hostilities, LGBTQ rights have been pushed to the forefront of global human rights campaigns. For many LGBTQ individuals around the world, the United States has become a beacon of hope for all that is possible for their longsuffering struggle to live life as the person they were born as.
On this July 4th Independence Day, we Americans celebrate the freedoms and ideals our country was founded upon and still endeavor to achieve. We take pride in extending these liberties to all who find themselves fortunate enough to live in the United States of America. Forever grateful for the sacrifices of past generations, we appreciate how far we have come in such a short amount of time in advancing LGBTQ rights in our country. The United States now serves as a refuge for the global LGBTQ community who wish to live their lives openly without fear or regret. Inherent in the constant struggle of the LGBTQ community in America is the undying promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s the American way.
