They Said Roe Was Safe Too. Now a Coalition of 47 Groups Is Coming for Gay Marriage

Eleven years ago today people packed West Hollywood Park to celebrate. The high-on-life party spilled over to the Abbey afterwards. It was here. Finally.

The Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the day, 5-4, that same-sex couples had the right to marry in all 50 states. West Hollywood was already among the first cities in the country to issue same-sex marriage licenses. That night it felt like the fight was finally over. It wasn’t.

Eleven years later, support for same-sex marriage is declining. The legal threat is real. And one of the cities that celebrated the loudest has more reason than most to pay attention.

Three words that broke through

Earlier this month, on June 2, just the second day of Pride Month, a post went up on the official X account of Rep. Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee. “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.”

 It was deleted within hours — Ogles said a staffer sent it without his knowledge. “The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus,” Ogles said. “The employee has been reprimanded.”

The condemnations came from both parties. Rep. Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, called it “idiotic.” “Homosexuality exists. In America,” Lawler wrote. “In fact Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian. It doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called it “reprehensible.” Speaker Mike Johnson called it “untoward.”

The post referenced a resolution signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declaring June “Nuclear Family Month,” which defined a nuclear family as one “consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children.”

Ogles never answered whether he agreed with what the post said.

 All of that is just another day in Trump’s Republican party. The news here is a Gallup poll from earlier in the year that found  support for gay marriage declining.  Gallup found 65 percent of Americans supporting legal same-sex marriage — down six points from a peak of 71 percent back in 2022 and 2023.

The drop isn’t coming from Democrats. Support stands at 87 percent among Dems, 67 percent among independents. Perhaps it’s no surprise the drop is with Republicans. Support for same-sex marriage has fallen to 37 percent. That’s the lowest it’s been in nearly a decade. In 2021 and 2022, Gallup found 55 percent of Republicans favoring legal same-sex marriage. That’s an 18-point drop in four years.

The number of Republicans who think gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable has cratered to 35 percent, down 21 points from the peak four years ago. That puts Republican attitudes on gay relationships back where they were roughly in 2005. The polling drop tracks almost exactly with Trump running for president again and then winning. No thinking person believes that’s an accident.

Ross Hemminger is president of the Log Cabin Republicans, the LGBTQ conservative organization. “Ten years ago, no one would have tweeted anything like that,” Hemminger said. “Now we have come full circle, having arguments about what we thought was settled.”

He said younger Republicans are a factor. “People coming into the party now don’t remember the fight for marriage, because they were children. All they know is that there is this whole trans thing.” Hemminger, who graduated from high school in Ohio as an openly gay man in 2008, said his generation didn’t think much about it. “People said, ‘Who cares who someone marries?’ Now it’s young people leading the charge on ‘Gay marriage was a bad idea.'”

For the record, the “trans thing” Hemminger refers to includes this: since January 2025, the Trump administration has issued more than two dozen executive orders targeting transgender Americans, including bans on military service, restrictions on medical care for minors, and directives removing federal recognition of gender identity.

The legislative push

Nine states introduced measures last year to either ask the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell or limit marriage to heterosexual couples. Idaho’s Republican-controlled House passed one. Montana introduced a similar bill. North Dakota’s Senate killed its version 16 to 31.

Republicans hold a supermajority in that chamber.

Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas went a different route. Their bills create a new marriage category called “covenant marriage” — one man, one woman, harder to dissolve. They don’t mention Obergefell. They don’t have to. None of the measures carry legal force on their own.

Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act in December 2022. Twelve Republican senators voted for it. It requires every state and the federal government to recognize any marriage lawfully performed elsewhere, regardless of the sex of the parties. It also repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, on the books since 1996.

If the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell, existing marriages will still be recognized under federal law. Getting a new license in a state like Idaho is a different question.

The new campaign

In late January, a coalition of 47 conservative organizations launched a coordinated campaign called “Greater Than,” with the explicit goal of overturning Obergefell. The campaign is led by Katy Faust, founder of the advocacy group Them Before Us. Its central argument frames opposition to same-sex marriage not in religious terms but around children’s welfare — claiming the ruling put adult desires above children’s right to a mother and father.

“Since the redefinition of marriage a decade ago, we’ve seen the consequences: parenthood treated as replaceable, and children deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide,” Faust said.

No court has accepted the children’s rights argument. No major pediatric or psychological association supports it. The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing 67,000 pediatricians, says children’s well-being is shaped by the quality of family relationships, not by who the parents are or who they love.

The court

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing separately when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, called on the justices to also reconsider Obergefell. Justice Samuel Alito has expressed similar views.

The Supreme Court quietly declined in November to hear an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk jailed in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court denied the appeal without comment or noted dissent — leaving Obergefell in place, but offering no signal about a better-constructed future challenge.

Mary Bonauto, one of the attorneys who argued Obergefell before the Supreme Court, said she sees no current case positioned to threaten the ruling. “There’s no imminent threat to the ruling now, but one doesn’t know if one could emerge,” Bonauto said.

West Hollywood passed the country’s first domestic partnership ordinance. It was among the first cities to issue same-sex marriage licenses, beginning in June 2008, before Proposition 8 shut them down that November. It passed the first City resolution in the country in support of marriage equality. Nationally, the Williams Institute at UCLA estimates there are now 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States — more than double the number when Obergefell was decided.

The right to legal abortion had been the law of the land for nearly five decades. Millions of American women went to sleep one night with a constitutional right they’d had their entire lives.

People said the same thing about Roe. For 49 years, they were right. Then one morning they weren’t.