Equality?

I’m sorry to be such a downer.

But if you’re celebrating the recent Supreme Court ruling that makes same-sex marriage legal, you’ve got maybe two weeks to be happy. At best.

Because soon, the couples would have put a ring on it, the gay wedding cake will be ordered, the media will find something else to overreact to, and we all will again remember that the LGBTQ community has a long way to go.

Only 19 states protect from private and public workplace discrimination by sexual orientation and gender identity. Only California, Oregon, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. have banned conversion therapy. 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. This CDC report puts the suicide-attempt rate of gay and lesbian teens at about 25% and the suicide-attempt rate of bisexual teens at 28%. And this UCLA report puts the suicide-attempt rate among transgender men at 46% and the rate among transgender women at 42%.

For those keeping score at home, this is not LGBTQ equality.

And now the movement has another roadblock: people who think LGBTQ people HAVE equality.

“We gave the gays what they wanted! They can marry now! LTQBG equality is finished! What’s their problem now?”

If you think working against people who espouse open hatred is hard, try people who don’t acknowledge you still have a problem with inequality.

This ruling will be to LGBTQ people what the Civil Rights Act is to black people. It will be a landmark triumph after a series of smaller wins. People will make movies about it. In the future, people will point to this event in history textbooks and immortalize Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen DeGeneres, and Caitlyn Jenner as great activists of the generation.

And many will stand in the way of future reform. They may no longer talk about the sanctity of marriage. But they will come up with bullshit policies to discriminate against LGBTQ people. They will lump LGBTQ people into easy-to-dismiss tropes. They will hide their biases in a glorification of the past, so that they can pretend the real work is over.

Go ahead, pour the champagne. But if you think LGBTQ equality is done, talk to an LGBTQ person. Better yet, talk to a woman. Or a person of color. Or someone with a non-cis gender identity. Because if you think the movement is over, you’ve officially become part of the problem.