In early August, on a cliff above the ocean in Baja California,

Mexico,

two of my favorite people took their wedding vows at dusk.

My niece Krissa and her partner Julia asked seven friends to provide brief reflections on seven touchstones for a successful marriage. The friends talked about authenticity, vulnerability, generosity, community, balance, humor and home. It was a beautiful ceremony, and when the brides kissed it was an emotional highlight for all of us, and proof as if we needed it that same-sex marriage is as romantic and meaningful as

each

other

marriages

.

The glow lasted until I returned

from Mexico

to Los Angeles and noticed a flurry of email fundraising appeals from a man named Brian Brown, homophobic founder of the National Organization for Marriage.

Brown’s organization fights against homosexual relationships, and his emails felt like a personal insult.

Serious?

Will these people never give up the fight against gay marriage?

Finally, in December, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bipartisan bill that codifies same-sex and interracial marriage. Even Pope Francis understands that marriage equality is here to stay. One of the agenda items of the 2023 global meeting of Catholics, which starts this week in Rome

,

is whether same-sex couples deserve the blessing of the Church. (This is not at all the same as allowing gay Catholics to marry in church, but it is a slight softening of the very hard line against it.)

However, there are a few reasons

,

why gay marriage

suddenly feels weak for something.

First, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court ultra

–

The conservative majority has not only revived the anti-movement

–

abortion crusades, but also other anti-equality movements.

Judge Clarence Thomas

S

competing opinions in Dobbs vs. Jackson

Women’s Health Organization,

suggesting that the court might also want to look at other apparently settled issues, such as the legalization of contraception

mixed marriage

and gay marriage, could once have been dismissed as reactionary bluster. Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. had hastened to convey the majority opinion that Dobbs

only

applied

only

to abortion. But as the Court’s three most liberal justices put it in their dissent, “Either the majority opinion is hypocrisy or additional constitutional rights are threatened.” It’s one or the other.

Many gay rights advocates were shocked to their core by Thomas

S

claims in his Dobbs contest. If gay marriage were somehow overturned, how would the legal rights of same-sex parents be affected? What would happen to their children? What should they do now to protect their families?

In Florida, two families

–

attorneys, Ryanne Seyba and Meaghan Marro, decided to offer, for free or close to it, so-called second parent adoptions. So even if a marriage were suddenly declared invalid, parental rights would be preserved.

In August 2022, Broward County Judge Mariya Weekes

[cq]

invited more than a dozen families to the court for certification

theirs

Adoption by second parents. Everything

by

the couples were women, because, like

Seyba Reyba

told me that gay men who become parents together generally do

both

have already gone through the legal adoption process, while for lesbian couples, because usually one of the spouses has given birth, this did not seem necessary because there is no parenthood.

Until Thomas’s suggestion in Dobbs threatened the rights of these families. How unfriendly can the Supreme Court be to gay marriage if the current lineup of justices takes another crack at it?

Here’s a hint: In 2019, Brown of the National Organization for Marriage made headlines after tweeting a photo of himself posing with Alito and Judge Brett

M.

Kavanaugh, three weeks after they heard arguments

BostockBoystock

vs. Clayton County, perhaps the most important gay rights case to come to court since it legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

Alito and Kavanaugh, along with Thomas, would become the three

dissenters

in the

BostockBoystock

which found that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides protection

gay, lesbian and transgender

protect employees against discrimination on the basis of

sex being homosexual, lesbian or transgender

.

The disturbing thing

National Organization for Marriage Campaign where I came home after my niece’s wedding jumped on the broadest possible anti-progressive bandwagon

.

The fundraising effort is called NOT. As in: the union of two women is NOT marriage, a transgender woman is NOT a woman, an embryo is NOT a choice.

I think it’s to be expected that Brown and company will try to play on the fear of drag queens, librarians, and gender-affirming doctors. But what was especially offensive was the campaign’s disingenuous argument that same-sex marriage has weakened the institution of marriage, an outcome that Brown takes credit for predicting.

As evidence, Brown offers a recent Pew Research Center survey of 5,000 adults, which yielded some shocking results: Only 23% of Americans now believe that being married is extremely or very important to living a fulfilling life, and only 26 % believe that having children is extremely or very important.

The fact is, also according to

T

According to the same Pew poll, most American adults who are married, single, gay, heterosexual or transgender prioritize job satisfaction and friendship over marriage and parenthood.

That seems about right to me.

Yet Brown describes this as a tragic collapse of public belief in traditional marriage and parenthood in the years since same-sex marriage was legalized.

I’ll give Brown this: Even he acknowledges that another Pew survey also found that 61% of adults believe gay marriage has been good for society.

If most Americans think our country is better off allowing people to marry whomever they love, that hardly indicates a collapse that is “tragic.” Perhaps all the better

description adjective

is a long time ago.”

@robinkabcarian