Same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage (also called gay marriage) is a legally or socially recognized marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender.

• Today's 70% support for same-sex marriage marks a new milestone in a trend that has pointed upward for a quarter of a century. A small minority of Americans (27%) supported legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages in 1996, when Gallup first asked the question. But support rose steadily over time, eventually reaching the majority level for the first time in 2011.
  By the time of the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, support for gay marriage had reached 60%. Since then, the issue has been less prominent in U.S. politics, and public support for same-sex marriage has continued to increase.
  • Justin McCarthy, “Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage”, Gallup, (June 8, 2021)

• Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans' views.
  Democrats have consistently been among the biggest supporters of legal same-sex marriage. The current 83% among Democrats is on par with the level of support Gallup has recorded over the past few years. This could suggest that support for gay marriage has reached a ceiling for this group, at least for now. Meanwhile, support among political independents, now at 73%, is slightly higher than the 68% to 71% range recorded from 2017 to 2020.
  • Justin McCarthy, “Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage”, Gallup, (June 8, 2021)

• As would be expected at a high-water mark in national support for same-sex marriage, all age groups are the most supportive they have been to date. Still, age differences remain, with 84% of young adults, 72% of middle-aged adults, and 60% of older adults saying they favor same-sex marriage.
  • Justin McCarthy, “Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage”, Gallup, (June 8, 2021)

• It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: marriage. You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not “gay lunch”. I parked my car; I didn't “gay park” it.
  • Liz Feldman, quoted in Harper, Robyn (6 June 2012), "When I Get Married, Will It Be a 'Gay Marriage'?", The Huffington Post 

• And so the question arises: How does America address its homophobic past as it moves forward into a more tolerant future? If American views on gays have changed -- and they have, with shocking rapidity -- that means there are a lot of people in this country who used to hold more deeply anti-gay views than they do today, and who may be ashamed of what they once thought and said in what now seems a distant and unenlightened era. Two thirds of the change in views on gay marriage comes from "individuals' modifying their views over time" and only "one-third was due to a cohort succession effect, or later cohorts replacing earlier ones," according to sociologist Dawn Michelle Baunach, who looked into the issue in a 2011 Social Science Quarterly piece. Most such people have had the privilege of a private life, where their participation in an ugly ideology that diminished and damaged gay people is something they speak of only in conversation with friends, or recall within the inmost sanctuary of their own thoughts. But some people have been living public lives a long time, and have left a very public paper trail of their expressions of discomfort and distaste. What is the proper response to the discovery of such information?
  How do we as a society react when people openly change their views in public on gays, and on same-sex marriage?
  And are we finally ready to get beyond the politics of the mid-1990s?
  • Garance Franke-Ruta, How America Got Past the Anti-Gay Politics of the '90s, The Atlantic, 8 April 2013

• The Defense of Marriage Act was a very successful piece of legislation. Not only did it create two categories of marital benefits -- one for straights, and one for gays -- but it had a profound silencing effect on political leaders. Between 1996 -- when DOMA was passed -- and 2006, only one member of the U.S. Senate came out in support of same-sex marriage, according to data collected by Wonkblog's Dylan Matthews: Dean Barkley of Minnesota, who replaced Paul Wellstone after his death in 2002 and served a grand total of 61 days in office.
  But starting in 2012, that began to shift -- thanks in large measure to Joe Biden.
  The vice president got the ball rolling on the new round of gay-marriage pronouncements on May 6. "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual -- men and women marrying -- are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," he told NBC's Meet the Press. That put pressure on Obama to make his own views clearer -- not that there was much doubt about what they were. "There's no doubt in my mind that the president shares these values and that's why it's time for him to speak out in favor of marriage equality as well," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. Days later, Obama sat down with ABC's Robin Roberts, telling her, 'I've just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."
  • Garance Franke-Ruta, How America Got Past the Anti-Gay Politics of the '90s, The Atlantic, 8 April 2013

• What's happening now is a wholesale repudiation of the 1990s move to eject gay people from the American family, writ large. The reason for DOMA was anti-gay animus by a group of men who showed their respect for marriage by divorcing multiple times and having affairs. The reason to undo DOMA is a rejection of that animus, and the growing recognition there is no way to argue against same-sex marriage that is not ultimately an argument for the moral inferiority of gay people. As of Friday, only four Democrats in the U.S. Senate had not come out in favor of gay marriage.
  "I have concluded the federal government should no longer discriminate against people who want to make lifelong, loving commitments to each other or interfere in personal, private, and intimate relationships," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota said. "I view the ability of anyone to marry as a logical extension of this belief."
  The reason to not support gay marriage is the lingering sense that there's something strange or not right about it. That it's fine for gay people to do what they want in privacy, but that their relationships are not the same as straight ones. Not as powerful, not as loving, not as legitimate.
  "[T]his is the inevitable extension of my efforts to promote equality and opportunity for everyone," said Sen. Mark Warner in announcing his new views. "[A]s many of my gay and lesbian friends, colleagues and staff embrace long term committed relationships, I find myself unable to look them in the eye without honestly confronting this uncomfortable inequality," observed Senator Claire McCaskill in a Tumblr post.
  • Garance Franke-Ruta, How America Got Past the Anti-Gay Politics of the '90s, The Atlantic, 8 April 2013

• The 1990s are over. Newt Gingrich, who stepped down as House Speaker after the Republicans performed poorly at the polls in 1998, in 2012 lost his comeback bid and the Republican presidential primary. Former representative Bob Barr, the sponsor of DOMA in 1996, in 2009 recanted his support for the bill and said gays should be allowed to marry. Bill Clinton -- who signed it the bill with a statement saying "I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages" -- has too.
  But if that moment of moralism in the mid-90s deserves to be remembered, it's for the lesson that the American people, when they stop being upset about an issue, really let it go. Clinton was impeached over his infidelity, but he hung on to office and became one of the most beloved ex-presidents ever. His party even won seats in the House and Senate the same year his scandal dominated the news, as the public defied political predictions and turned against the moralists instead of the man they accused.
  As the drumbeat of shifting views of gay marriage continues, each voice affirms gay people as part of the American family, and each senator freshly legitimizes gay Americans as he or she repudiates past views or clarifies new ones. Whatever happens with the Supreme Court, this moment of change and affirmation -- this moment of public evolution -- is having a power all its own.
  • Garance Franke-Ruta, How America Got Past the Anti-Gay Politics of the '90s, The Atlantic, 8 April 2013

• Nonetheless, a kind of Gresham's law applies. Bad sex drives out the good, and the worst of all- philandering and homosexuality- are exalted. Gay liberation, pornographic glut, and one-night trysts are all indices of sexual frustration; all usually disclose a failure to achieve profound and loving sexuality. When a society deliberately affirms these failures: contemplates legislation of homosexual marriage, celebrates the women who denounce the family, and indulges pornography as a manifestation of sexual health and a release from repression- the culture is promoting a form of erotic suicide. For it is destroying the cultural preconditions of profound love and sexuality; the durable heterosexual relationships necessary to a community of emotional investments and continuities in which children can find a secure place.
  • George Gilder, Sexual Suicide (1973). New York: Quadrangle Books, hardcover, p. 5

• Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.
  • Justice Anthony Kennedy, majority decision for Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).

• Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in? Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me?
  • Elizabeth Gilbert (2010), Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage, Viking 

• New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex.
  • Bill Maher (2005), New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer 

• The people of Virginia have spoken by a margin of 57-43. They’ve already enshrined in the Virginia Constitution that gay marriage is not permitted, so unless there is another effort to change the Constitution, that matter is settled. That is the law of the land and, look, reasonable people can disagree on these things. That’s what the law is now. That’s something that I support. That was the right decision.
  • Bob McDonnell, statement from McDonnell at a press conference, referencing a referendum on 5 May 2011 wherein Virginia voters approved a proposed amendment to the Virginia constitution to ban same-sex marriage; the amendment was made unconstitutional in the ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. As quoted by Anita Kumar, "McDonnell: Gay marriage ban was “the right decision”" (10 May 2011)

• Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some businesses may discriminate against LGBTQ+ people on First Amendment grounds, a Texas judge is once again arguing for her right to refuse to marry same-gender couples.
  Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, has refused to sign marriage licenses for same-gender applicants for years. After the state Commission on Judicial Conduct sanctioned her in 2019 for refusing to perform her duties impartially, Hensley unsuccessfully sued the panel for damages, arguing she could not be compelled to violate her religious beliefs.
  Last week, the Texas Tribune reports, Hensley filed a petition with the Texas Supreme Court citing last month’s 303 Creative decision — which held that a private business could not be compelled to provide services related to same-gender weddings — as precedent to award her $10,000 in damages. The court agreed to revive Hensley’s suit against the commission in June, days before the 303 Creative decision was made public.
  • Samantha Riedel, A Texas Judge Is Citing the Supreme Court's 303 Creative Decision to Refuse Same-Sex Marriages (14 July 2023), Them

• Hensley’s “sincere religious objections to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage,” the petition reads, are constitutionally protected even in her role as a judge. According to the petition, the 303 Creative decision “rejects the idea of a ‘compelling interest’ in forcing wedding vendors to participate” in marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs. The petition argues that 303 Creative undermines the state’s case, which rested on its “compelling interest” in requiring Hensley to affirm all legal marriages.
  But there’s a big asterisk next to Hensley’s argument, because of course, a judge is a member of the government sworn to uphold the law to the best of their ability, not a business owner selling goods or services. “The law of the land is marriage equality. It’s as simple as that,” said Equality Texas spokesperson Johnathan Gooch in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “If judges and justices of the peace were empowered to only enforce the laws that they agreed with, we would quickly descend into anarchy.”
  • Samantha Riedel, A Texas Judge Is Citing the Supreme Court's 303 Creative Decision to Refuse Same-Sex Marriages (14 July 2023), Them

• The decision saw the court side with a Colorado website designer who sued for the right to refuse service to LGBTQ\+ people. Hensley has previously been represented in her suit by the law firm First Liberty Institute, which has argued on its website that since Hensley’s staff signed same-gender marriage licenses at a different office blocks away, no rights had actually been violated — even though that seems like the literal definition of “separate but equal” segregationist policies, which were outlawed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Last week’s petition was filed on Hensley’s behalf by Jonathan F. Mitchell, a former Texas Solicitor General and the architect of the state’s infamous Senate Bill 8 “bounty” law that allows individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
  LGBTQ+ activists have decried the 303 Creative decision in the past two weeks, pointing out that details of the case appeared to have been falsified. But conservatives have already jumped on the decision to justify denying service to LGBTQ+ people, adding insult to injury where possible. One Michigan hair salon owner announced last week that transgender people were no longer welcome at her business, recommending they “seek services at a local pet groomer” instead.
  • Samantha Riedel, A Texas Judge Is Citing the Supreme Court's 303 Creative Decision to Refuse Same-Sex Marriages (14 July 2023), Them

• Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'
  • Henry Rollins, Talk is Cheap Volume 1 (1998)

• The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.
  • Cokie Roberts, Real Time with Bill Maher, August 6, 2004.

• The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples.
  • Justice Albie Sachs, Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another, 1 December 2005.

• Defenders of marriage
  Defending the institution against people who wanna get married
  • Roy Zimmerman (satirist), “Defenders of Marriage” (song) (1998), Faulty Intelligence (album)