11 Years of Obergefell v. Hodges

I remember June 26th, 2015 like it was yesterday.

I was at Faria Beach (in Ventura, CA) on summer vacation in a beachside house with my father and step mom, and my husband (at the time, boyfriend). I remember opening facebook to the endless feed of "your friend has updated their profile picture", which was the same photo of said friends, but with a facebook overlay created for pride.

As I scrolled facebook, I came across a news article, with a photograph of the white house, lit up in rainbow colors, with a headline I will never forget; "Supreme Court rules in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide". Living in California, where marriage had been permitted for gay couples since 2013, this should not have struck me as deeply as it did, but I could not help but feel my heart skip a beat. I was now protected and free to marry whom I loved, in all 50 states. How incredible! The work is done! Or so I thought.

What was going to happen over the next few years I could not have predicted. It started the day after, on June 27th, when Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, refused to issue marriage license to gay couples. She was held in contempt, released, sued by the gay couple for several hundred thousand in damages and attorney fees, and as of 2025 most recently, her and her lawyers have been trying to use her situation to bring Obergefell back to the table to overturn.



Roughly a year and a half after gay marriage was legalized, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States. A sharp fall in progressiveness for us. While he *himself* has professed his alleged support for gay people and how he did well with the "gay vote", and most of his anti-LGBT legislation is transgender focused, it cannot go without saying his cabinet (especially his first VP, who was rumored and implied to be a major supporter of conversion therapy),  and the American public that is empowered by him, were extremely unsafe for the LGBT community as a whole.

The bigger issue with the Trump presidencies, is an attack on the Transgender community is a direct attack on the LGBT community as a whole; each regression we face puts ALL of our rights at risk. This is something that a straight person simply has the privilege of never understanding the feeling. A feeling that you cannot hold hands with your loved one in public out of fear of being harmed or killed is a real, deep fear, that lives inside each and every member in the LGBT community that is not privileged to be "passing".

Then came time for my husband and I to get married, in 2018. Years after gay marriage had been legalized, I assumed my husband and I would not run into any impact of us being gay, even in Florida (which, with it's "purple past" has grown more and more conservative year after year). To my surprise, that was not the case. My husband and I had been together for several years, and were quite young (I was 19 at the time!), so we knew we did not want to create unnecessary financial strain on ourselves just to get married, so we opted for a courthouse marriage, originally meant to be shared between just us two, and our closest friends. Upon heading to Duval County courthouse in November of 2018 to obtain our marriage license, we asked the clerk about how to go about scheduling a courthouse marriage ceremony, and we were told sharply "they are not performed here", and that we'd need to go down to St. John's County. I knew this could not be coincidental. Call it a gay sixth sense, if you will, but you could feel it had something to do with being gay.

Me and my research oriented brain decided to put this to the test shortly after we were married (at St John's County courthouse, of course). To my distain, but not to my surprise, I was correct. Duval county, alongside at least FOURTEEN other Florida counties, stopped performing courthouse marriages (gay or straight, due to the fact that you could not discriminate), because staff were uncomfortable performing same-sex marriage ceremonies. Duval county even had a marriage chapel dismantled the week before the equality law took effect.

With the Trump presidency, and his hateful rhetoric and embolden sense he provides to his conservative supporters, support for gay marriage has seen a steep decline. Not overall, which, overall support thankfully yields a higher number than it did during the 2015 ruling, as many left leaning individuals have learned gay people just want to love their spouses, but among the republican party. In fact, the partisan split on the issue is the highest it's ever been, at a 47 point gap since Gallup began tracking in 1996. Republican support has collapsed from 55% to now about 37%.

On the positive side, the Respect for Marriage Act that was passed in 2022 provides federal protection in the event Obergefell does see itself overturned in my lifetime. An important act, as Justices such as Clarence Thomas mentioned in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that Obergefell should be next on their list. And, lawmakers in at least nine states over the last decade have introduced measures to chip away at LGBT rights.

With all of this said, happy fucking Pride. Gay people have always been around, and will always be around. May we remind ourselves that Pride is the commemoration of the Stonewall riots of June 1969, when gay, lesbian, and trans activists fought back against a routine police raid, at a time when being gay could cost you your job, housing, and even your freedom. Homosexuality at that time, was criminalized, and classified as a mental illness. Pride will always be around, because until things progress further, LGBT people will ALWAYS be at risk. Pride is as much a celebration of who we are, as it is a protest, and a reminder; we aren't fucking going anywhere.

Following my emotionally charged statements from above, I encourage you to scroll through a few of my favorite pictures captured of pride flags out in the world. Each will have a short story of how and where the picture was taken.

If you are viewing on mobile, you will also see the photos that correspond with the above writing.

Until next time,

Nico