Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

“Why should anyone feel secure about the right to marry,” he asked, “when this Court has proven it doesn’t believe in precedent?” Jim Obergefell to The Advocate magazine.

Today, Friday, the Supreme Court Justices will meet behind closed doors to determine if they will hear a case that includes a challenge to the previous ruling on marriage equality. The case involves our favorite Kentucky gal, Kim Davis. It isn’t a strong broad case that SCOTUS would typically consider. So they may pass.

Advocates will tell you that the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act signed by President Biden will preserve existing marriages and ensure the rights of married LGBTQ couples will be respect state to state, even if a state does not itself perform marriages.

That patchwork of marriage equality is actually not equality, right?

Factor in the myriad of Functional Marital Equivalent (FME) that exist nationwide on the state level – civil unions, domestic partnerships, domestic unions, among others – and then factor in the even more myriadic versions issued and recognized on the local level – and we’ve got a quite a quagmire. Again.

This is exactly why I believe it is imperative to strengthen all FME’s everywhere. They are a line of defense to protect LGBTQ+ families. I believe the courts should address these issues sooner rather than later. And not just because it effects me personally It is more that if could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.

Here in Pennsylvania, we have a ‘trigger law’ – a law banning marriage equality that’s on the books still, but rendered moot by the COTUS ruling. The Pennsylvania Legislature has not successfully repealed it. So if Obergerfell is overturned, Pennsylvania will no longer issue same sex marriage licenses.

Furthermore, Pennsylvania’s legislature has not recognized almost any LGBTQ+ right ever – no statewide discrimination protections, no hate crimes, no marriage (see above), no parentage/adoption legislation, etc. Pennsylvania did ban conversion therapy for minors, but SCOTUS took care of that.

This lack of legislative action suggests we are foolish to think our state government will be able to protect us at least in the short run.

That is why I say we turn out attention to local FME’s and ensure they are strong enough to afford us the protections they were designed to offer.

Then there’s the matter of the federal Respect for Marriage Act that should protect existing same sex marriages in states that will no longer perform them. We also count on the tradition of ‘grandfathering’ to protect existing marriage – precedent. For example, when Pennsylvania’s state legislature did eliminate common law marriage in 2006, any existing common law marriage was ‘grandfathered’ as a valid legal relationship.

That’s also foolish. Anyone who thinks President Trump, the Republicans, or the Supreme Court will not trample over grandfathering to dissolve every single same sex marriage in the US – you are ignoring actual facts.

One of President Trump’s early Executive Orders involved ‘birthright citizenship’ – a legal status actually embedded in the US Constitution.

Since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 9, 1868, the citizenship of persons born in the United States has been controlled by its Citizenship Clause, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

This EO was not supposed to be retroactive, just applied for children born after it was issued. It is of course tied up in court cases. But we also see people – undocumented, documented, legal citizens – as well as adults and children being swept up in ICE kidnappings. They don’t stop to confirm the identity of the people they kidnap much less their paperwork or even their age. They just sweep them away and let the system somehow sort it out. That’s a great example of due process, right?

Our federal government has no respect for any precedent. While the court cases challenging the EO are working through courts, the kidnappings continue. US citizens are snatched off the street without due process, taken away, denied access to a lawyer or healthcare or sometimes food and water until the system spits them out again onto the sidewalk. Children are ziptied. Children are ziptied.

Children are ziptied.

Anyone who could authorize those things isn’t going to respect marriage equality, a legal concept that is NOT specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Why would they? The goal as laid out in Project 2025 is to eradicate anyone who is not part of the ideal Christian Nationalist family.

Now Project 2025 does not explicitly call for the dissolution of existing same sex marriage, but implicitly erodes their stability by undermining every LGBTQ right. No nondiscrimination protections, no hate crimes laws, no federal benefits, no access to federally funded pension plans and/or Social Security, no bans on conversion therapy, and a full throttle investment in right wing extremist Christianity.

The impact would reduce same sex marriage to a second class type of marriage that has almost no legal or financial benefit. One need only look to Pennsylvania to understand this – while about 52% of same sex couples have married, a significant number 48% have not. This is as of the 2020 census with marriage equality being in place for six years. It also shows up in a national trend – the question is why are so many same sex couples choosing not the marry?

That warrants academic attention.

From a Pennsylvania perspective, I’d hazard that the lack of statewide discrimination protections, the lack of hate crimes protections, the inability of state government to effect change. the presence of white nationalists, the failure to codify second parent adoption, etc are good reasons why people might not marry. But that’s just a guess.

We might know on Monday if the Supreme Court will hear the Kim Davis case. If not, there’s room for a small breath of relief, but don’t be lulled into thinking that it is over. There’s another case, and another case. The Nazis are thinking ahead. They have a plan.

Do you?

ps: your plan should be to immediately see a LGBTQ competent family lawyer to get everything in order. how many people who have all of their immigration documentation in order are now rotting in concentration camps in spite of it all? honor them by doing what it takes to protect your family. And please make sure it is a LGBTQ+ competent lawyer, not your Dad’s golf buddy from St. Whatsihoosit Church or your cousin’s BFF who went to law school for two years before declaring a gap year to tour the couches and spare bedrooms of their entire family. Borrow the money, set up a GoFundMe, consult existing LGBTQ+ legal resources, do what you gotta do. If your kids are LGBTQ+, this is even more urgent.

I realize I often come across as hysterical and wound up. But I’m right far too often for that to stop you from at least considering what could happen.