After Roe, is Supreme Court's Obergefell gay marriage precent safe?

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“It would be a ep psychologil and emotnal blow to a lot of gay, lbian, and bisexual people to be told that even if their state has to regnize a marriage formed out of the state, that their state nohels disapprov of their relatnship and effectively nsirs them send class cizens, ” says Michael Boui, a law profsor at the Universy of Buffalo.

“We support the fn of marriage as a God-ordaed, legal, and moral venant only between one blogil man and one blogil woman, ” says the party’s official platform, which also characteriz homosexualy as “abnormal” and rejects Print Joe Bin’s 2020 printial w. ”Last week, Bin warned of the “ultra-MAGA agenda attackg fai and our eedoms, ” om schools troducg “Don’t Say Gay” legislatn or banng genr-nfirmg re for mors. “If this were to happen, the urt would be movg opposn to a public opn trend that has shown creasg support, ” the report if were up to the Texas Republin Party, would not stop platform lls homosexualy an “abnormal liftyle choice, ” and oppos “any crimal or civil penalti agast those who oppose homosexualy out of fah, nvictn, or belief tradnal valu.

Kennedy, then the center of the High Court, rejected the optns before him, cidg agast sidg wh a same-sex uple who had been nied a ke for their Colorado weddg receptn and agast sidg wh the baker who said his oven was off-lims to gay upl. Jt a few weeks ago, when Transportatn Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the natn’s hight-rankg Senate-nfirmed gay member of the Bin Admistratn, joed TIME’s Washgton Bure for a wi-rangg nversatn, he was blunt: “I mean, Roe fell and that was the law of the land for longer than I’ve been alive. When Print Barack Obama threw his admistratn’s support behd a challenge to Proposn 8, the gay-marriage ban enacted by California voters 2008, his Jtice Department troduced what amounted to a bizarre promise.

Proposed that the Supreme Court le that stat like California, which had extend gay men’s and lbians’ “marriage le” alternativ like domtic partnership or civil unn, were vlatn of the nstutnal prohibn agast “separate but equal”—but was fe to offer no regnn at all.

The proposal was signed to ensure that no state would have to beg validatg gay or lbian fai unr the force of a urt orr. But a simultaneo lg by the urt that the Defense of Marriage Act was unnstutnal dramatilly changed gay-rights ligators’ view of what was possible.

Acrdg to the urt’s applitn of the equal-protectn clse, such a termatn would subject not only the marriage bans but a whole range of feral, state and lol laws that disadvantaged gay men and lbians (and possibly transgenred people, as well) to a higher level of judicial scty. Yet Jtice Anthony Kennedy, who had prevly wrten three watershed opns that had helped to tablish the full cizenship of gay men and lbians, had nsistently cled to see the s on those terms. He knew he was wrg for history, and that passage immediately adorned merchandise—to this day Etsy remas filled wh posters and noterds featurg Kennedy’s words—and is now often read at weddg ceremoni for both straight and gay upl.