Raise your hand if the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not you could marry.
Folks in interracial couples and queer folks, I see you.
Now raise your hand if you’re afraid the Supreme Court might take away your marriage.
I see you, my queer family.
Finally, raise your hand if you’re worried the Supreme Court might make it OK for you to be arrested and prosecuted for sexual intimacy in your own home.
My queer family, I see you again.
Susan Shaw
Welcome to the brave new world of Christian nationalism.
With the invalidation of Roe’s interpretation of the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution, other cases that relied on that reasoning may now be at stake. Justice Clarence Thomas made this clear in his concurring opinion on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision.
Thomas wrote, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. … Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
The Griswold (1965) decision gave married couples the right to obtain contraceptives. More to my point for now, Lawrence (2003) prevented states from outlawing same-sex intimate relationships, and Obergefell (2015) gave same-sex couples the right to marry.
“Now those rights — and the hard-fought protections we’ve won for our relationships — are vulnerable to a conservative Supreme Court majority with a strongly religious agenda.”
Now those rights — and the hard-fought protections we’ve won for our relationships — are vulnerable to a conservative Supreme Court majority with a strongly religious agenda.
If you’re wondering why this matters, let me take you back to the days before Obergefell. Without marriage, queer couples could not access the benefits and protections afforded to married people.
For example:
- Partners often could not be included on many health insurance plans.
- Partners could not receive Social Security benefits.
- Without a health care power of attorney, we could not make health or end-of-life decisions for one another.
- We couldn’t file our income taxes jointly. For some of us that meant a huge tax penalty.
- Partners couldn’t necessarily access family leave benefits.
- Without a will, partners weren’t default inheritors of property.
And this is just a short list.
As individual states began to confer marriage rights to queer couples, the U.S. became a patchwork for us to navigate as we moved around the country. In Oregon, I was married. When I visited my mother in Georgia, I wasn’t.
My partner and I are financially privileged enough that we were able to spend the thousands of dollars necessary to have an attorney draw up documents and create a living trust for us to protect our assets and ensure we could make decisions for one another if needed, no matter where we were. So in addition to remembering to pack the sunscreen and flip flops, we always had to remember to put our legal documents in our bags, just in case we had to fight a hospital administrator for the right to be in the room.
Most of all, however, marriage has been for us what it is for most people — an external validation of a lifelong love and commitment that deserves social recognition and support.
I guess if you’ve always assumed you could have a spouse once you met that one right person, you may not know how affirming it can feel to say, “This is my spouse.” I was thrilled and amazed when not too long ago my conservative mother introduced my spouse as her “daughter-in-law.”
“The validation of marriage matters.”
The validation of marriage matters.
So does the right to control one’s own sexuality, and that’s what Lawrence gave queer folks. Already the Texas attorney general has said he’d enforce the state’s sodomy laws if Lawrence is overturned. Overturning Lawrence will give government access to the most intimate parts of queer lives and will demean queer sexuality as aberrant, sinful and illegal.
If you’re straight, you might not care too much about all of this. After all, it’s not your marriage or your sexual intimacies that are at risk.
Except, if Griswold is overturned. Then your access to contraception might be severely restricted or ended, depending on where you live. And remember, now you also might not have access to abortion.
Many years ago, I went to a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert. They’re an a cappella group of Black women singers and social justice activists. The group’s founder, Bernice Johnson Reagon, said something between songs about the AIDS quilt and the killing of Black men that struck me as she talked about how all our struggles are interconnected. She said, “If they come for me in the night, they’ll come for you in the morning.”
Straight folks, with my marriage at stake and my sexuality targeted by the Right, I’m imploring you to join in the fight to preserve human freedom and dignity … because if they come for me in the night, they’ll come for you in the morning.
Susan M. Shaw is professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. She also is an ordained Baptist minister and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her most recent book is Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide, co-authored with Grace Ji-Sun Kim. She serves on the BNG board of directors.
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