Obergefell One Year Later

One year ago today, I woke up early on a Friday and headed to the Supreme Court with a group of friends. We had only slept for a few hours, and we were all exhausted.

We heard that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision was supposed to be announced that morning and we wanted to be there when it happened. When we got there we were surrounded by a decent number of people, but there was no guarantee that the decision would actually be announced that day.

When we finally saw people running out of the building, we knew there was a decision. Part of me feared that the court wasn’t going to make marriage equality a reality, and the other part of me knew that no matter what the decision was, that it wouldn’t protect LGBTQ people from being discriminated against in the slightest. It took forever for us to find out that love did win and that marriage would be a legal right in our country.

One year ago today, we celebrated love winning but we knew work still needed to be done. The sign I made had a quote from Macklemore’s song “Same Love” this line represents what this day was: a good place to start.

Marriage equality wasn’t the one thing that needed to be changed in order for LGBTQ people to be treated equally or have equal protection legally in the US. We still live in a society where people can legally be fired for their sexual orientation. Trans people are still murdered at alarming rates. Our societal culture and laws still haven’t caught up.

Since the Obergfell decision, Kim Davis made national headlines for stopping issuing marriage licenses because she didn’t want to issue them to LGBTQ couples. Donald Trump has successfully become the presumptive Republican Nominee while campaigning on a platform that opposes marriage equality, and has mixed views on protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination. And most recently, a person committed a hate crime at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 people and leaving 53 people injured.

We can rejoice that love has won, but we need work together to keep fighting for equality and justice for everyone. Our struggles are tied together, so we must work together to end them.