Photo: Eric Holder. Credit: The Aspen Institute/flickr.
The Obama administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of marriage equality nationwide in a brief filed with the court Friday.
“The marriage bans challenged in these cases impermissibly exclude lesbian and gay couples from the rights, responsibilities, and status of civil marriage,” the “friend of the court” brief filed by the Justice Department states. “These facially discriminatory laws impose concrete harms on same-sex couples and send the inescapable message that same-sex couples and their children are second-class families, unworthy of the recognition and benefits that opposite-sex couples take for granted. The bans cannot be reconciled with the fundamental constitutional guarantee of ‘equal protection of the laws.’”
The brief is one of dozens filed with the high court calling for a ruling in favor of marriage equality later this year. Also on Friday, more than 300 conservatives and 211 Democratic members of Congress urged the court to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage in separate briefs filed with the court.
According to the brief, state bans on same-sex marriage “impose a more direct stigma that is all the more painful because its source is the home State and not the federal government; they exclude lesbian and gay couples from the institution of civil marriage; and they deprive the children of those couples of equal recognition of their family structure. There is no adequate justification for such a discriminatory and injurious exercise of state power.”
In January, the nation’s highest court agreed to consolidate four cases challenging same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld marriage bans in those four states. On Thursday, the Supreme Court announced oral arguments on the issue of marriage equality would be heard April 28, with a ruling expected by the end of June.
With Obergefell at risk and 32 states poised to restrict same-sex marriage, LGBTQ advocates push to enshrine protections at the state level.
By Maximilian Sandefer
August 6, 2025
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Abortion rights were now no longer guaranteed nationwide as the issue was left up to the states. This shock reversal of over 49 years of precedent left reproductive rights activists scrambling as anti-choice state laws stemming from as far back as 1864 were revived and reinstituted.
As people's ability to access to reproductive care dwindled in conservative-led states, activists also found their footing. The 2024 election saw abortion rights ballot measures win in seven out of ten states. As we navigate a landscape where it will likely be a long time before we see any form of successful federal legislation protecting a woman's right to choose, state-by-state activism seems to be the driving force behind change.
Conservative Christians are absolutely outraged over casting a same-sex couple among families featured in the new reality show Back to the Frontier.
Premiering last week on Magnolia Network -- co-founded by HGTV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines in partnership with Warner Bros. -- the show is a social experiment that sends families to live like 1800s-era pioneers. Among them is Texas couple Jason and Joe Hanna-Riggs and their 10-year-old twin sons.
The Gaineses, executive producers of the show, have been open about their Christian faith. They own Magnolia Homes and rose to fame on the home renovation show Fixer Upper. They faced criticism for not including same-sex couples among their clients whose properties they remodeled as part of the show.
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nation’s highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentucky’s. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
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