I was born in the mid 2000s so I obviously wasn’t really paying attention to world events in 2015. It just seems odd to me because it’s been completely accepted the entire time I have been aware that gay people are a real thing, seems like it was a huge historical event. Like that’s a big change to be happening in 2015
Was same sex marriage really not allowed until 2015 in America?
Yeah like this is not a US specific thing. SSM was not legal in many countries t the time. Even in many countries Redditors masturbate themselves over it was often illegal or not explicitly recognized until the mid 2010s.
Forget marriage, even homosexuality itself was illegal in Ireland until 1993.
Being gay was illegal in TX and many other states until 2003.
In my country (Panama) homosexuality was illegal until 2008 and was legally called "sodomy", it's crazy how long it took for that law to be abolished, and it only happened because a pharmaceutical company was pressuring the government to do it for a new HIV treatment
It was also the first country to legalize same sex marriage by popular vote, with a pretty significant majority of 62%
My point isn’t “Ireland bad.” My point is that, not so long ago, even countries that are now seen as progressive posterchildren were ass-backwards on gay rights.
Oh I know what you meant, no worries, just adding on :)
Literally voted to be legalized in Liechtenstein today.
It's all mega recent. I was born in 1984, and when I was a kid people would still conduct 'gay-bashing' as an organized Saturday night activity [I say 'gay-bashing' because the real name can't be said on Reddit]. Basically a group would meet up, bring weapons, and go wandering the streets at night near gay bars or areas. If they found someone they thought was gay, they'd beat them up - sometimes to death. It was horrible. And gay deaths still weren't newsworthy back then.
My trashy older brother even got invited to one in the early 90s, with a paper invite as it were a birthday party or something. The invite suggested bringing a long, blunt object. He took a tire iron. He was 16.
Jesus where was this
Australia. This link provides some of the history: https://solidarity.net.au/reviews/poofter-bashing-sport-police-game/
What made it so difficult is that not only did the police not bother trying to stop it, the police were also partially involved in doing it.
In some parts of the US, I have read stories that were a lot worse - particularly for gay people of colour. But it varied a lot depending on location within the US.
It definitely happened in the US too. The most famous case is the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998. Absolutely sickening.
Yes, and the 'gay panic' defense is still permitted in court in 32 US states. Several more states are considering banning it, but it's a slow process. At the Federal level, a Democrat bill banning it has been introduced in congress 4 times since 2019, and died in committee every time.
It's such a strange defense. "I felt so uncomfortable about this person's gayness, that it made me panic and kill them". Thankfully Matthew Shepard's killers ultimately failed on that angle. But one-third of killers who use the 'gay panic' defense still continue to get reduced sentences because of it.
and this, this is exactly why we cannot belittle a lot of alt-right youtubers and twitter users, they have the potential to convert the youth, and the youth will repeat the same mistakes as the previous generation under the lies of “righteousness and religion”. These people cannot be allowed to spread their influence, as many of the past are made with influence.
The game "kill the carrier" (where a bunch of people chase down one person holding a football) was also called "smear the queer"
Yep we called it that also but i didnt know what a queer was back then
I've never heard it called kill the carrier. Guess it has a new, progressive name.
It’s really funny how South Africa drug their feet ending apartheid and then spedrun gay rights. Like, in 1997, sexual orientation added to their constitution as a protected class, three years after apartheid ended.
It’s like all the protesters turned around and said “now do gay rights next”.
South Africa was a strange example, in that it took popular opinion several more years to actually catch up to where laws had moved to on gay rights. The ANC just sort of went for it because there was a near-zero chance they would lose an election at that point in history.
What I’m hearing is, “Fuck it, we ball” creates a protected class
Gay marriage only became a nationally recognised right in 2015. Individual states had started legalising it from 2004.
It might seem weird, but when I was around your age, gay rights were as controversial and politically divisive as trans rights are today. And I'm not incredibly old.
Yep I met my partner in 2000 but he wasn’t my spouse until 2015. I also took his last name on all my documents so untying the knots of gay marriage would be so difficult as to be nearly impossible. We have been together 24 years now.
It’s such a trip! My now wife and I have been together since 1996. Back then I didn’t think gay marriage would ever be legal. Then we got officially married in 2015 when it was legalized nationwide in the US. I never thought we’d be worried about losing all that progress less than 10 years later. Here’s to hoping everyone votes like their freedom depends on it in the upcoming elections🤞🏼
We shote vote like our freedom depends on it, because it does.
I’m so glad for you!
Two things:
1) I am happy for you and your wife!
2)LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE The Reddit handle.
I really hope that the Biden administration protects our rights. I don't have much faith, but I'm still gonna vote.
The nationally recognized right in 2015 has already been codified into law by the biden administration, all democrats and some republicans in congress.
Not really. All it is was the federal government recognized it. If the supreme Court gets rid of that and states are allowed to ban it again, you can still go to a state that allows it and then get federal taxes recognized and all that but states can then deny recognizing it. So you'll have this weird two tier system.
Biden has so far. He continues to do so.
And trust me when I say it: You’re first for the internment camps if Trump gets back in because THAT’S HIS PLAN.
I am no lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think if SCOTUS were to overturn same-sex marriage it would not affect existing marriages, it would just prevent them going forward. I don't think they can retroactively make something illegal.
This is correct, and it's also now law as of 2021 (thanks to Democrats and President Biden) that states have to recognize marriages performed in other states. So if SCOTUS overturned Obergefell, individual states could choose to not perform gay marriages themselves. They would have to honor gay marriages performed in other states though.
I thought the bigger issue with overturning federal recognition is that couples would lose all of the federal rights that go with being a family member.
Some off the top of my head are: ability to see spouses if they're in a federal hospital, military death benefits, SS death benefits, military healthcare benefits, and the really interesting one: ability to get divorced in a state that wouldn't normally recognize the marriage.
Every time we bought a new property or big purchase between 2000 and 2015 we had to pay a lawyer to change the will. This was a huge difference for us and worth the downside. I was far less wealthy than my partner and qualified for governments assistance with housing and healthcare. When we married I traded those financial benefits to make marriage more accessible for future generations. Not only did I lose financial support but our expenses increased dramatically when I was added to his insurance. There is always a trade off and this was well worth it for the advancement of equality. We made an informed decision which makes our marriage even more special to me, we are considered a family now NOT just two individuals living under the same roof.
That may be the bigger tangible issue, but telling a significant number of people that they're not equal will have a much bigger effect. If you talked to any gay couple around that time it was never about the financial benefits, it was about being recognized as equal to everyone else
But the irony is that the financial aspects were the basis of the Windsor case!
Lawyer here. Frankly, we don't know what overturning Obergefell will mean. It will be a giant shitshow for sure.
I don't think they can retroactively make something illegal.
That's a criminal law thing. It's much more complicated with civil law. Also, most state laws and constitutional provisions banning same sex marriage are still on the books. So the marriages were conducted in violation of soon to be reinstated state law. It'll be a huge mess, but there's a good chance that at least some couples will end up "unmarried." Remember, the cruelty is the point.
I notice u keep saying “will” 🥺
I remember the anti choice protestors in california in 09'
Its crazy that cuba was able to legalize lgbtq rights long before the religious americans were able to accept it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Cuba
Cuba didn't get it done till 2022.
They made homosexuality legal before that, but the marriage thing is remarkably recent.
I remember organizing a letter writing campaign in high school, 2010, to our senator asking them to work on legalizing gay marriage nationally.
Lord, help. Lol Parents would be burning down the school where I live if we did that now, much more so back when I was actually in school. Bein queer in good ole Alabama is fun. And I mean that with more sarcasm than the human body is capable of expressing. Lol
I can imagine!! This was in NH so definitely more accepting. But even back then we ran it through the “Gay-Straight Alliance Club”. Lots of “straight allies” in that club that were kids who didn’t want to come out to their families.
American Christians have proven their mission is not to spread love and the peace of sages of the ages BUT instead to judge others by their beliefs and punish them accordingly. Putting their religious beliefs into laws by overtaking the democracy has always been the plan with them. There is no love in the hearts of evangelicals for those that differ in religious beliefs. They are controlled by their self-righteousness via false prophets in high places. Avoid the evangelical religions.
Putting their religious beliefs into laws by overtaking the democracy has always been the plan with them.
Yeah, since the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell crap in 1979, the Satanic Panic starting in 1980, on through til now, the right has always wanted to go back to the times of the Salem Witch Trials.
There are developing countries in Africa which legalized gay marriage years before the USA. Sometimes I think, if the USA didn't have money, if you put their issues down on paper you would swear it's a third world country. It still shocks me that child marriage is legal in 38 states in the USA.
Old Millennial here and I remember gay marriage being such a hot topic debate my entire childhood... and then we pretty much legalized it overnight and for the most part everyone accepted it. It definitely wasn't always this way though!
You've definitely sanitized that memory a bit. While it was legalized very quickly, there was so much backlash from the conservative psychotic side of the country that the government had to do a lot of legal stretching and thorough exploration of loopholes to enshrine a lot of protections for it in the law, and they have still spent the last ten years trying to re-criminalize it.
Wait you're telling me people didn't end up marrying their dogs or animals like I was warned by the TV? Next you're gonna tell me the death panels thing never existed.
Death panels absolutely exist. Every insurance company has them.
Death panels don’t exist in the way Sarah Palin was talking about. There’s no federal committee deciding who lives and dies as a result of the Affordable Care act
I mean, Sarah Palin's mere existence kills enough people that she could serve the same purpose.
There was definitely backlash, but both public opinion and legal protection for gay marriage moved miraculously fast. Its a social issue where rather than simply waiting for old people to be replaced with younger people, minds were actually changed!
Yeah. Even by then, we all knew someone that was LGBtQ and it wasn’t a big deal at all to us. Parents on the other hand, you’d think the end of the world was occurring.
Nah, a lot of old bigots died. And some just shut up, which is good. The homophobes that suffer in silence are the best type.
They are still processing the legal ramifications for the various clerks who refused to perform marriages.
I distinctly remember even seeing nice liberals and rad lib sociology professors trotting out the sanctity and practicality of institutionalized marriage argument. Which is hilarious and obnoxious in hindsight
A group at my college tried to set up a gay-straight alliance club. The school wanted to allow it, but politically couldn't. So, they dissolved all official clubs and told the student council to self-organize all clubs unofficially. The student council was allowed to charge all students a club fee, disperse funds to all the clubs, and borrow school-owned spaces. That way the students could have their GSA club while the school pretended to publically shake their fist at them.
Nowadays they don't have to do such wackadoodle bullshit to show their support. lol
And many states were amending their constitutions to *outlaw* it in 2004.
California famously constitutionally banned gay marriage in 2008.
The only state to do it twice, both times by popular vote.
I’ll never forgive the people voted for that. What a sad fucking time.
And prop 8 amended CA’s constitution.
It was a Karl Rove play designed to drive evangelical turnout since the evangelicals were already getting sick of Bush.
That was the GOP's get out the vote effort for Bush's reelection. Get conservative-leaning people all wound up and angry about the possibility of gay marriage so they get out to vote against it by voting for state constitutional amendments banning it and also vote for Bush for president while they're there.
It's so weird having lived through both and hearing the exact same fear-mongering playbook being used for trans rights as they did for gay marriage.
I’ve mentioned this a few times here on Reddit. I grew up in a conservative town with very conservative parents. I was super sheltered from the world, so I was basically growing up parroting right wing stuff and was all set to be a good little conservative when I was old enough to vote.
But in the mid 90s when I was 14-15 years old, I started hearing the argument “if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, the next step will be people marrying dogs!”
Now, I’m not going to claim I was the brightest kid. But to my teenage mind, there was a glaring problem with this argument. Marriage is a lot of things, but importantly, it’s a legal contract. Dogs cannot sign legal contracts. A dog cannot get legally married, period.
When I started to push back on the “marrying dogs” argument with people who were making it, they’d change the subject or just say something vague about how it didn’t matter.
That was the singular event that caused me to re-evaluate everything I’d been taught about politics and identity. If they were making an argument this disingenuous, how could I trust any of their other arguments without further analysis?
Because of this one specific idiotic argument about this one specific issue that should never have been an issue, I reassessed everything and as a result, I have never and will never vote conservative.
Left no room for the mentally deficient
Literally every progressive platform becomes normalized to conservatives 20 years after the fact, it's in the name. Change happens one funeral at a time
it was ruled by the supreme court in 2015. That all states had to recognize
Obergefell requires all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.[194] This held all state same-sex marriage bans to be unconstitutional and legalized same-sex marriage in all remaining states.
The same sex marriage equality legal standing wasnt finalized in the US until 2022
In December 2022, the final version of the bill Respect for Marriage Act divided American religious groups morally opposed to same-sex marriage;[196] it was supported by some as a suitable compromise between the rights of LGBT couples and religious liberty,[197] a position that was taken by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,[198] but was prominently opposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention due to their views on sexual ethics.[196] Religious groups that supported the bill in support of their LGBT parishioners include the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church (USA).[199][200]
And with the current court that does not recognize any sort of precedent that they don't like, there is a high likelyhood of a challenge to Obergefell in the coming few years.
In 2012 my brother's girlfriend had a "No on Proposition 1: Support Marriage" sticker on her car. She was very "religious" yet she was dating my brother while going through a divorce.
Luckily she wasn't permanent.
To such people, the argument that "straight people have already made a complete hash of marriage; gay people certainly aren't going to do any worse" was oddly unpersuasive.
Yes, also many conservative states had anti sodomy laws on the books making anything beyond male to female vaginal intercourse illegal.
The last anti-sodomy laws in the country were outlawed in 2001 after a couple was arrested in Texas for having sex in a private room.
This shit is recent.
I thought it was 2003? I could be wrong
I think Lawrence v. Texas was filed in 2001 and decided in 2003, if I remember correctly.
2003 but yea. And Clarence Thomas wants to bring those laws back.
Lmao right? I remember it being a huge thing for Obama to decide if he was pro or anti gay marriage rights. Then there was the discrimination case for the wedding cake
There were civil unions before that but they didn’t get the same rights and benefits as a married couple.
gay rights were as controversial and politically divisive as trans rights are today.
Moreso, I'd say. It was an acceptable liberal position to oppose same-sex marriage -- Obama opposed same-sex marriage as late as 2010.
That seems so weird now. That was not even that long ago.
Many democrats still oppose trans rights, so I’d say that OP’s statement is reasonable.
And when my parents were born, interracial marriage was not yet legalized, which I think happened in 1967?
I'm almost 41. I remember stories from when I was young about gay people being murdered often. That was the 1980's-90's.
I'm going to say this means that trans rights won't be particularly controversial by the start of the 2040s
Even then it was contested in individual counties that simply stopped issuing all marriage licenses. My spouse and I had to travel to another county for our courthouse portion for our hetero marriage in 2016.
Yes, the speed at which the public conversation and awareness has shifted around gay rights specifically is astonishing. That and cannabis are, I think, the two biggest 180 flips that I’ve seen in my lifetime. When I was in high school just 20’years ago both the ideas of gay marriage and medical cannabis were laughable. Like, even if you supported both, you knew and everybody else knew that weed wasn’t ’real’ medicine and same sex relationships weren’t ’real’ marriages.
And now, widely, and especially for people just a little bit younger than myself, the idea that these things were ever controversial is just perplexing. Like, what do you mean gay marriage as a federal constitutional right is less than 10 years old!?!?
Here's hoping trans rights go the way gay rights disband just become normal. So sick of the stupid political culture war shit being pushed.
It is unlikely. At least for a few decades at least. The swing came due to a supreme court case which made it legal, which encouraged substantial coming out, which then led to greater empathy.
The current US supreme court is unlikely to support trans rights, and that majority is unlikely to change for quite a while (potentially even more decades if Trump is reelected and the oldest conservatives retire).
Also, because being trans is less common than being gay or bi, fewer people end up having an empathy-creating experience.
But trans rights are starting out with a lot more voice than gay rights did in early stages, so we will see.
But i don't think you are going to get the radical, rapid shift that came with the supreme court decision when it comes to gay marriage.
I know, just need to hope that things will at least get a little better. For everyones sake
Oh i hope they get better. And they are radically better than they have been in the past. I just wouldn't expect the same kind of instantaneous switch.
I'm more scared of things swinging back the other way. Always seems like a pendulum.
But I as a 36 year old I remember people not committing to marriage making the joke, "I won't get married till everyone can in solidarity."
I also wonder if any gay couples in 2015 that would totally get married if they could, end up with one person getting cold feet.
Conservatives are using gay and lesbian people to target trans people already.
It's been effective enough that they're starting to turn their sights back on gay and lesbian people.
Hopefully trans rights take the same trajectory. Unfortunately they have become the new Boogeyman for conservatives.
Exactly! When I was in high school twenty years ago there was a debate whether lesbians should be allowed in locker rooms. It was tough for me to be a lesbian back then. :,( Many of our people took their own lives. Thank god things are so much better now. <3
Before 2015 even heavy hitters like Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama were staunchly against same-sex marriage, that's how controversial it was.
And of course it was Bill Clinton that signed the Defense of Marriage Act in the first place, and that Act defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
At least they agreed that same-sex couples should at least have some form of legal union (for visitation rights, property transfers, etc.), but they were definitely of the opinion that a marriage means the union of a biological man and a biological woman.
And when the laws finally started changing to allow same-sex marriage, Hillary believed that it should be a states rights issue, left up to the decision at the state level. Not sure where Obama stood on that one.
So same-sex marriage is definitely a relatively new right, but it makes sense that people born in 2000 wonder what took so long.
Obama didn't wait quite that long, thanks in part to Biden's "gaffe" in 2012 when he came out in favor of gay marriage in an interview. Obama was trying to maintain a carefully balanced message supporting civil unions but not full marriage equality, and Biden blew that all up.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/joe-bidens-gay-marriage-slip-up
I think of this as Biden's shining moment. He's pathologically committed to bipartisanship and moderate approaches as president. With gay marriage, he just said the right thing even though it was a big political risk.
Biden literally led the charge to marriage equality even before Obama. And then he pushed the 2022 Congress to legislatively enshrine marriage equality and interracial marriage. I feel like lots of people do not know the history of the last decade. Biden should heavily message on gay rights and marriage equality. LGBTQ voters could easily swing the election if we support Biden.
I always heard the theory that it wasn't a gaffe, it was deliberate, and Obama wanted him to do it to see how it went down with the public, so he could decide which side to take.
I definitely think it was intentional, not a gaffe. I have no idea if Obama wanted Biden to do it. It didn't seem like it at the time.
Big W for Biden, hell yeah! Protect gay rights!
He's pathologically committed to bipartisanship and moderate approaches as president.
This is just wildly incorrect, and it’s so sad that people think this is true. Biden’s admin is way to the left of Obama’s, and he’s gotten a ton of shit done.
The economy is doing way above expectations from where it was when Biden took office (people were constantly screaming we’d be in a recession, inflation is way down, unemployment is super low, stock market is booming), we made huge investments in green energy and infrastructure, they’re working on a ton of progressive regulations (a big example is expanding overtime pay to all workers making under 55k), funding Ukraine, the IRS is piloting free tax filing, they’re in the process of changing weed from schedule 1 to schedule 3, etc.
Biden has absolutely not governed as a centrist or only done things with Republican support. He’s governed as a solid Democrat.
I do appreciate when he goes for the old "Do it, coward." approach to politics.
Obama left pretty much everything up to the states
Obama "opposed" it in the 2000s with a wink and nudge. Way back in the 1990s, he'd filled out a form saying he was for it, so those in the know figured he was just saying what he needed to say to get elected and would eventually come around publicly to the position he held privately. Which he did.
OP might be assuming that federally recognition of a relationship is a barometer for overall acceptance of that relationship. But for a long time people figured that civil unions were good enough, and, go back far enough, and even the LGBTQ consensus wasn't for same-sex marriage. Many saw it as heteronormative to presume that same-sex couples would have the same legal framework as opposite-sex ones.
My junior year of high school I moved to a small town.
One of the friends I made came out as gay. First there was multiple threats. Then there was violence.
Which begat more violence.
This took place in the late 90s.
I was born and raised in a small town, and the fear of being found out stuck with me until, hell, 2020? Even when I moved to “the city” for college, and I knew the people around me were more accepting, I still kept it close to my chest. I still don’t disclose most of the time anyway
We bought a house in same home town, where the town had previously rallied around a local guy when his family disowned him for being gay (in his 30s?) but when our neighbors stalked in front of our house chanting slurs and “gay is not okay” and threatening us all night on NYE this year, no one helped us.
It’s fucking awful in some places even now & I wish I had at least a sip of OP’s naïveté
We’re probably the same age and had similar experiences. People couldn’t safely come out until they moved away to a much bigger city.
Yeah. It's really strange to think about now, isn't it? I was born in 87, and that was 22 years after legal racial segregation was taken off the books in the US.
I thought it was insane that racial segregation was ever a thing, even though I was well aware of all the ongoing issues with racism. It's nice to see further progress being made. But the fight is never really over. There's still racist, homophobic morons everywhere.
Even crazier to think women were not allowed to take out a loan without a male cosigner until 1974. I get that that was 50 years ago at this point, but if feels long past the time when women should have needed a man to fully participate in society.
Most of us who grew up in the70s can tell stories we heard from our moms about things they weren't allowed to do. One friend has never forgotten that a clothing store wouldn't let her mother buy a couple of nice dresses unless she brought her husband, for example.
Growing up in the 80s, kids in my town thought nothing of casually dropping racist slurs. And the major networks still showed Looney Tunes cartoons that had racist stuff in them.
Nope, indeed wasn’t legally nationwide until then.
The results of activism towards that is very young. Hell, being trans was a punchline 20 years ago
Being trans is still a punchline to many people
Yeah but it was a society-wide one back then like transphobia being super prevalent in media and such
Yep. That joke of walking up to a woman in a bar and she turns out to have a deep voice and broad shoulders or whatever was sooooooo common in movie, shows, album skits in the 2000s. It wasn’t that long ago.
Chappelle found a way to squeeze four Netflix specials out of one tired joke.
Even the attitude towards trans on Rupaul's Drag Race is markedly different from what it was only 10 years ago.
Public opinion on homosexuality and gay marriage changed at an incredible pace
I mean, it shouldn't have taken decades for everyone to think "Oh, hey, why would I care if men can get married to men... I guess I don't!" but for public opinion, going from 68% opposed to 60% in favor in just 20 years is very quick.
Punctuated equilibrium theory in evolution points out that on the time scale of whole species, evolution happens very rapidly. It still takes thousands of years, it's not rapid on a timescale of any one individual, but compared to the millions of years species are around, it's very quick. Gay marriage went through a punctuated equalibrium: it was agonizingly slow for activists demanding their rights be honored, but as far as societal timescales go, that was lightning quick.
It’s still a punchline… I took so long to realize I was trans because of shows like Maury in the 90s. I also get downvoted and laughed at regularly online.
Thankfully I pass in public and am in the process of changing my legal name. I’m already legally female.
I can't even rewatch movies and TV shows from the early 2000's because everything I thought was funny at the time was just a gay joke, trans joke, or fat joke.
The early 2000s was an especially unhinged time for television. There were whole shows designed literally just to be “the body shaming game show.”
Yeah I love HIMYM, but many jokes from the earlier seasons have aged like milk.
In 2000, Vermont created the idea of a "civil union," basically a separate category of marriage that let them give same-sex couples all the rights of marriage without actually calling it marriage.
Some states followed, then a few years later Massachusetts really turned things upside down when their Supreme Court said banning same-sex marriage violated the Massachusetts constitution.
that let them give same-sex couples all the rights of marriage without actually calling it marriage
Well, they tried to. There were just some things that civil unions did not automatically get that made them unequal to federally-protected marriages. Especially with various levels of laws/regulations that only mentioned "married" or "marriage" in their text and thus didn't immediately (or ever) cater to civil unions.
Given that most laws/regulations no longer hinge on the gender of each half of a married couple (laws on what husbands can do, but wives cannot, etc.) it was much easier to just allow marriage between same-sex couples to ensure equal treatment than have to rewrite a ton of laws to cover civil unions just to keep them supposely separate in name only.
ETA: This inevitable inequality between civil unions and marriage was part of the argument for legalizing same-sex marriage. "Separate but equal" just did not work out the way those who wanted to use "civil unions" as a compromise between the defend-one-man-one-woman-marriage and equal-rights-for-gays had hoped.
Yep. Separate but equal worked about as well for marriage as it did for race equality - I.e. not at all.
But Mass. had a Jim-Crow law which meant if you couldn't marry in your home state you couldn't marry inn Mass. either. Took a while to remove that. Which is hwy in my Buffy fanfics, when I had Willow and Tara marry in 2005, they eloped to Valencia Spain, paid for by Willow's great-aunt Ida who so wished thye could marry in her hometown of Boston
The current Republican party official platform, right now, right this second, says that marriage should be between one man and one woman, and that they disagree with the Supreme Court ruling that allowed gay marriage.
Yep, here's the current Republican Party Platform document linked on their official website: https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Resolution_Platform.pdf
Page 31
Look, this is silly, the doctrine of stare decisis means that gay marriage is and will always be the law of the land. To change it now would be on the level with taking away a woman's right to...
...
Oh.
At the risk of getting too political for this subreddit, this sort of shit is why we need biden to win. Things seem shitty under biden but it can get so so so much worse.
This needs to be higher, kids don't realize how easy it is to lose everything that's took so long to earn.
It makes me happy that you can't wrap your head around gay marriage being illegal. It's a sign of progress. I'm probably 20 years older than you, and, while I understand the Jim Crow south was real, I just can't believe it wasn't that long ago. It's nice that you see gay marriage the same way.
When I was in high school my state passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, all my classmates were staunchly against gay marriage., 9 years later the Supreme Court made it the law of the land allowing same sex marriage. It’s been 9 years and I am now a high school teacher, last year a teacher tried to start a GSA club and nobody signed up, she couldn’t understand why. It was because it quite frankly isn’t needed anymore (at least in my school), it’s absolutely wild to me how quickly attitudes have shifted.
As an LGBTQ individual I personally feel like the way the Supreme Court is heading that one day they'll take away my rights for same sex marriage, just as they did in Dobbs VS. Jackson for Roe VS. Wade a few years ago.
I honestly feel the same. We like to feel like we live in a different world then the early to middle 2000s/2010s but not really. We as LGBTQ people have to fight for our rights daily and not take anything for granted. I wouldn't be surprised if our rights end up back in front of the Supreme Court in the next 5 years if not less and they will be in serious jeopardy.
That's why it's important to VOTE not just in presidential elections, but all your local elections!
10 years before you were born, Ellen Degrneres came out on tv and it was world news. Not that long ago it was actually illegal to be gay in some places, well, not to be gay, but to be caught doing something homosexual. I recommend the documentary about The Stonewall Inn.
Not to mention that its still illegal in many places, either via law or unofficially. Even in countries where being gay is legal, some communities will still threaten violence or flat out be violent towards anyone they perceive as not straight. And whatever the law says doesn't matter when the cops are the ones committing the violence. The southern united states, for instance, has a huge problem with this.
Her sitcom also got cancelled because she came out.
People stopped watching because it offended their delicate feelings, then they went on AOL and downloaded images of lesbians secretly
Open your eyes conservatives haven't stopped trying to make it illegal, and they are getting closer. It has never been "completely accepted". In my opinion like abortion this SC looks like it will send it back to the individual states.
Potentially, they seem pretty hellbent on transgender people being Target #1 well before gay marriage for now at the very least
A lot of them don't see a difference between trans and gay. Look how drag queens come up in every discussion about trans folks, for example.
They know transgender people are easier targets. Easy to go after a subset of “undesirables” and chip away at them. All gays will be next. Probably go after interracial marriage after that too.
I will hand one thing to these fucks, they are patient and can play the long game. Just make sure your children and grandchildren are as hate-filled as you are, and eventually they will fulfill the horrible world you started.
Keep chipping away until it’s 1864 again…
Here's a not so fun fact: Alabama didn't officially amend a state constitutional ban on interracial marriage until the year 2000.
It was approved with a whopping 60% of the vote! A whole 40% of participating Alabama voters were against the symbolic repeal of an interracial marriage ban. A total of 545,000 people. Most of those backwards fucking idiots are still alive and voting.
I learned this on reddit probably 15 years ago now. Blew my mind then, blows my mind now.
Even the slogan "Own the libs!" makes it clear that the goal is a return to treating people as property.
It's all the same fight for them. There's a reason gays and trans people have joined together. It's because, historically and currently, to anyone who's not one of us, we are all the same. Notice how conservatives nowadays call all LGBT people "groomers"
To them, all of it goes against traditional views of gender and so all of it is bad.
I remember my mom saying she didn’t know why someone would change their gender and then be gay, like becoming trans was to become straight. Effeminate gay men and butch lesbians also really confused people with how gender and sexual orientation mixed. Like, trans people absolutely existed and were around—there’s an old newspaper article that was like “this navy boy turned into a BOMBSHELL lady”—but people outside of those communities didn’t know there was a difference. Some people still don’t know, I don’t know if half the people who complain about trans rights know that women can become men, it isn’t just the one way.
Same sex marriage being newly legal isn’t a purely U.S. thing at all, and the US has had it legalized years longer than countries like Germany, the UK, Switzerland, or Greece who legalized earlier this year. Italy still hasn’t legalized it.
Yeah there are right wing movements all over the world looking to destroy gay rights. That is true.
it’s been completely accepted the entire time I have been aware that gay people are a real thing
No it hasn’t been lol. It still isn’t. You really haven’t been paying attention.
To everyone in their life, it has. Which is a good thing! But it also makes it hard to see that it has NOT been a thing for everyone everywhere, and that is the problem.
I watched a TikTok the other day where a parent of two small kids (under 10) had to explain “coming out of the closet” to her kids, and they were baffled. They couldn’t understand why someone would need to be in the closet in the first place. And when the mom explained that some people didn’t accept their kids being gay and would kick them out, they were shocked and upset.
When you’ve never seen it, it can be hard to believe. “Why would you be willing to kick your kid out of your home for being in love with the wrong kind of person? No parent would do that, right?” We (as adults) know it’s true, but those kids (and OP, apparently) have not seen it.
Not having experienced it is a large part of it. I currently live with someone who's parents' today still will make judgemental comments on a regular occasion about the fact they are gay. It's not gone, but people who aren't gay also aren't going to observe it nearly as much as people who are, regardless of time period. Same with any discrimination.
It also depends on where you live.
This exactly. I was born in 2002 and realized I was gay right around Obergefell. I remember the ruling so I know it’s recent, and logically I know there are still many people who aren’t accepting of gay people. But I have never met a single person in my life who has cared at all if I was gay. At the very least, if they were bothered by it, they understood it to be socially unacceptable and didn’t say it. I never even really came out, I just casually mentioned it and it wasn’t a big deal to anyone I knew. It’s a completely different world than it was even 20 years ago.
In my area and experience it has been. In high school there were multiple gays and it would have been social suicide to openly say discriminatory stuff about them. This is in a suburban area of a southern state, maybe other places have more problems.
And they never faced any discrimination before attending your high school and after, or in public or from their families, I’m sure.
I don’t know what there is to argue about this. You never noticed homophobia, that doesn’t mean homosexuality has been completely accepted for any amount of time, anywhere. I live in a progressive city in Canada (where gay marriage was legalized a decade before the US) and you would think homophobia wasn’t a thing here because people are so open about being gay and saying anything homophobic in public will get you ostracized. Then you talk to an actual gay person and realize they’ve been disowned by their families, denied housing, denied services, assaulted for holding hands with their partner in public, etc. Homophobia is everywhere. You’ve just never been forced to see it so you haven’t.
I’m not trying to argue with you at all! I’m just trying to understand, I did not know gay people where a thing when all of this stuff happened. Thanks for the insight
Indeed. As late as 2010, the president and his spokespersons were publicly saying they were against it: "The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control," White House adviser David Axelrod said today on MSNBC. After the SCOTUS ruling, they then celebrated it and claimed to have always been for it. So it was indeed a big change.
Y'know, up until 1967, it was illegal for a white person to marry someone who was not a white person, in the US.
The US doesn't really have all that great a track record when it comes to human rights, and it's simply amazing to me how fast it got through once folk started talking about it.
Wait til you find out there’s still people alive from when there was still segregation who probably remember MLK’s speech
Individual states allowed it, but not the whole country.
don't forget it wasn't too long ago that an African American and a white person could not marry America.
good luck
Just wanted to add that 15 is not too early to start paying attention to politics. You are 3 years from being able to vote.
That’s why I made this post! I want to learn. This will be the first election cycle that I can vote at
Not American, but Australian here. It really was not allowed til 2015 here as well sadly. We have much less states than America, so not sure if that has anything to do with it.
I remember being told that everyone was voting either yes or no to the proposed change, and all that kid me could think was “there’s no way its not legal”. It’s absurd how backwards everything was even just a few years ago, and sad really. Growing up I met many relatives and family friends who were queer and in relationships, and its sad to think that I didn’t even realise they were not able to legally get married to the person they love.
Australia legalized in 2017. The different styles of government do play a part too. Before being federally recognized, some states allowed gay marriage prior to 2015.
Edit: Massachusetts for example legalized in 2004, becoming the 6th jurisdiction worldwide to allow gay marriage.
I mean, look around the world. Only 37 or 38 countries have same-sex marriage at the national level.
No country on earth had national same-sex marriage in 2000, Netherlands was the first in 2001.
America was ahead of the UK, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, among many others.
"Sanctioned" is probably a better word than "allowed." I knew gay couples who were in de facto marriages way back in the 80s when I was a kid. Some had even had marriage ceremonies. They just weren't married in the eyes of the law. And then some states did start recognizing marriages or civil partnerships between same-sex couples, but that recognition didn't carry over from state to state. I remember hearing a story about a gay couple on a road trip got into an accident in a state that did not recognize their marriage, and one spouse was unable to make medical decisions or even visit their injured spouse in the hospital.
The 2015 law made gat marriage the law of the land, so there would be no more situations like the couple in the hospital. A spouse is a spouse.
Cakes are still a bit of an issue, though . . .
I was born in the late 90s, and my parents were (and still are) pretty conservative, and they alllllways had conservative talk radio playing in the car…your Rush Limbaughs, your Sean Hannitys, so my political awareness started young. None of that garbage stuck thankfully but I do remember the 2008 election vividly while a lot of my friends my age lowkey don’t even remember the 2012 or 2016 elections. Gay marriage was a huuuuge topic even in 2008, and it being legalized nationwide in 2015 was a big deal. Attitudes around LGBTQIA people have improved immensely over the last decade alone but we still have a long way to go.
I'm in my late 20s. I did my high school senior project on LGBT rights. Part of my volunteer work was phone banking voters to vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage in my state. I live in Washington. Gay marriage as a right is incredibly recent.
Texas had anti gay sodomy laws until 2003 when it was struck down by the Supreme Court. Police were literally arresting people for what they did in a bedroom.
East Baton Rouge Sheriff in Louisiana still does undercover sting operations where they approach gay men and get invited back to their place and then arrest them.
https://theweek.com/articles/461626/gay-men-are-still-being-arrested-being-gay-louisiana
It was legal in some states, but not nationwide.
Short answer: It was a state level question until then. 2015 is when Obergefell v Hodges happened, which legalized it nationwide.
Long answer tracing how quickly opinions changed:
Supporting same sex marriage in 2008 was seen as controversial. I live in California and we voted to ban it that year. Those who know recent US history may recognize that as the year that Obama was elected. You know, not that long ago.
Let's take a look at some contemporary sources.
Candidates' stated positions on same sex marriage for the 2008 election: https://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.samesexmarriage.html
Pew article from 2008 about the general opinions on same sex marriage. Note how a common opinion was that marriage is one man and one woman, but a civil union was OK for same sex couples: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2008/04/01/an-overview-of-the-same-sex-marriage-debate/
Wall Street Journal article about California banning same sex marriage: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122586056759900673
Now, let's look at contemporary sources just 4 years later in 2012.
Pew article about same sex marriage becoming more accepted: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/12/07/overview-of-same-sex-marriage-in-the-united-states/
Obama announces support of same sex marriage: https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/politics/obama-same-sex-marriage/index.html
Democratic platform officially is in favor of same sex marriage: https://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160562404/democratic-platform-endorses-gay-marriage
To the question about 2015, yes, that's when Obergefell v Hodges happened. Let's look at those contemporary sources!
Same sex marriage is legalized for the whole country: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-ends-sex-marriage-ban-nationwide/story?id=31924524
The full opinions and oral arguments if you really want to dig into it: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556
So, yes, the social acceptance of gay people changed very quickly. I'm about to turn 30 and very clearly remember that time period. This was not that long ago. Also a friendly reminder that Stonewall, i.e. the event that led to the first Pride, happened in 1969. Well before the average Reddit user was born, but recent enough that plenty of currently-living people were old enough to remember that time period.
Republicans are still pushing to outlaw gay marriage. I know it's on my states republican party official platform.
Oh, sweet summer child ... Wait till you learn that there are still many people in your country and throughout the world who don't accept that gay people even have a right to exist, never mind get married.
It seems "fishy"?
Love the idea that you can question well documented and even very recent history on vibes alone
(That's sarcasm. I don't love it).
I worded this question poorly. I am not denying the fact that it was not passed federally till 2015, however I am confused as to what the general feel about it was before and after that happened. I wanted to know if this was something that was something that was generally accepted at the time or if it was still controversial
It was definitely controversial.
Three years earlier in 2012, the Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney had clearly stated that he was opposed to same-sex marriage. This is the head of the political party that roughly half the country votes for, so he represents the approximate political beliefs of that half.
On the day of the Supreme Court ruling in 2015, Donald Trump (who would later become president) said "Once again the Bush appointed Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has let us down. Jeb pushed him hard! Remember!" John Roberts was appointed by a Republican president and this appointment had been supported by other Republican politicians, including some of Donald Trump's rivals for the Republican nomination. Trump was criticising John Roberts for failing to stop same-sex marriage as a way of criticising his Republican rivals.
All of the other Republicans running to be president at that time also said they opposed the Supreme Court decision.
In 2016, the "Republican Party Platform" (a document outlining the party's vision for what they intend to do) said this about the Supreme Court decision that legalised same-sex marriage:
Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.... We also condemn the Supreme Court's lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.... In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Here are some reactions from state governors in 2015 when the Supreme Court decision came down:
I have always believed in the Biblical definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.... I am disappointed that the Supreme Court has disregarded the choice made by the people of Alabama in its decision today.
-Robert Bentley, Governor of Alabama.
This decision goes against the expressed view of Arkansans and my personal beliefs and convictions.
-Asa Hutchinson, Governor of Arkansas
Marriage between a man and a woman was established by God, and no earthly court can alter that. This decision will pave the way for an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians who disagree with this decision.
-Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana.
Activist courts should not overrule the people of this state, who have clearly supported the Kansas Constitution’s definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.
-Sam Brownback, Governor of Kansas.
Throughout history, states have had the authority to regulate marriage within their borders. Today, a federal court has usurped that right to self-governance and has mandated that states must comply with federal marriage standards—standards that are out of step with the wishes of many in the United States and that are certainly out of step with the majority of Mississippians.
-Phil Bryant, Governor of Mississippi.
Please look up project 2025 - all the rights we think we have are up for grabs if the republicans win in November.
I went to multiple weddings in Washington DC because gay marriage was not legal in the state my friends lived in. The sad part was their marriages wouldn’t be recognized in the state they lived in, so it was mostly symbolic.
Yep, I remember courthouses staying open very late so scores of same-sex couples could get married starting at midnight.
It's wild how close times are to us for things that no longer resonate. I learned the other day women weren't allowed to have their own bank accounts until 1974.
When I was your age, I didn't know anyone outwardly queer in high school (including myself) and there was no Gay/Straight Alliance or anything. Being queer was extremely taboo in most of society and being trans was basically seen as being a complete freak. Attitudes have changed extremely quickly.
Depends what you mean by "allowed." - Lots of gay people were married in America before that, it's just that it was up to the states to decide whether to recognize those marriages (and thus confer the spouses the same rights that married hetero couples had) or not. Some recognized them all, some begrudgingly recognized the ones where people got married in other states but wouldn't issue wedding licenses in their state, and some wouldn't recognize any at all.
2015 was when it became federal law, and thus made it no longer the states' decision.
It wasn't until 2012 that approval of gay marriage was over 50% (per Gallup polls)
I was born in 98, so i was 17 when it was legalized, which included my state because it was still illegal here. As a bisexual woman, It was a big deal even then and i remember a lot of tears and happiness from me and some people around me, but also remember the people around me who were angry about it.
You are correct. It was not allowed and it was a huge argument among people. I am older and LGBT, almost 38.
I know many people who 'lived together' because they couldn't get married.
The people who argued against it by the way are still around. Many, if not most, are now the MAGA trump folks. They would very much like it to be reversed, just like they did with Roe V Wade.
theres still some parts of america that are incredibly.... not into same sex marriage
a lot of the anti-trans rhetoric were the similar to the anti same sex marriage rhetoric (and still is, theyre all p****philes, gay men arent real men, lesbians arent real women, its a mental disease that must be cured, its unnatural, its evil, stuff like that)
look up westboro baptist church, they definitely made headlines
Not only was Gay Marriage not legal in all fifty states till 2015, but in 2004 California voted to /not/ recognize it. Literally the most liberal state in the country said No to gay Marriage just 20 years ago.
Edit: apparently it was 2008, so 16 years ago, not 20.
In 1996 (when I was in high school) the US was holding the Olympics in Atlanta. The torch was supposed to pass through my city but didn't- partially because my city made a big show of passing an anti gay amendment at that time.
That wasn't repealed until 2020.
This stuff isnt ancient history. It's recent and can change on a dime if people's attitudes let it.
And if one supreme Court judge ever gets his way it'll be illegal or at least up to the States again. Not to mention a large part of one party that would love that.
Barack Obama originally ran under the platform "I believe marriage is between one man and one woman".
In later years, he said his position was "evolving".
it’s been completely accepted
About 28% of US citizens polled are against same-sex marriage, and the official party platform of the Republican party is opposed to the court case that declared it legal.
Check this out- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage#Timeline
It's all pretty new