Urgent issues remained then (and remain now): basic non-discrimination protections, hate crime laws and access to health care. Marriage equality certainly didn’t make everything OK for LGBTQ+ Americans. Opinion: LGBTQ Americans are in a state of emergency –and we should all do more about it (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images/File Supporters of LGBTQA+ rights march from Union Station towards Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on March 31, 2023. It was a big “take that!” to a social order and a government that had, for so long, oppressed or ignored my community. Then, when marriage equality became legal and I met my soulmate, I realized that getting married was the most radical act I could commit. The tradition was rooted in patriarchy and rigid gender rules and came with so many weird traditions that people spent appalling amounts of time and money on.Īs a queer person, I often felt lucky to be on the outside of those societal pressures, even as I also felt bitter that I was denied access to something so many others could have – simply because of my gender or who I loved. Marriage was a prison sentence, I told myself, a suffocating institution that cisgender and heterosexual people walked into like zombies because they thought they had to. There were a lot of happy tears.įor many years before that fateful day, I resisted the notion of domestic partnerships or marriage as a concept. What an incredible wedding present from the Supreme Court to receive legal recognition of our marriage less than a month later. We decided it was worth getting married even if our government didn’t recognize it. I married my wife 10 years ago, less than three weeks before the SCOTUS ruling. That law stipulated that it was illegal to define marriage in any way other than as a relationship between one man and one woman. Windsor, which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. Edie Windsor took on the United States government and won as the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case United States v. This June marks 10 years of marriage equality.
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