It was June 26, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court did something rare: it expanded freedom.
In a 5–4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court affirmed that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as anyone else. Ten years later, we commemorate that moment—not as a gift handed down from on high, but as a milestone won through protest, heartbreak, and the unshakable moral clarity of Americans who refused to be erased.
But if the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that in America, freedom is never final. It must be defended—or it will be dismantled.
We now live in a country where marriage equality is the law—and yet some elected officials still call it illegitimate. Where rainbow flags hang in corporate offices each June—and yet LGBTQ+ Americans still face housing discrimination, healthcare disparities, and the coordinated targeting of queer and trans youth. Where dignity prevailed—but hate never disappeared. It came back dressed in the old language of “values,” “tradition,” and “protecting children”—the same tools bigotry has always used to sound respectable.
Obergefell wasn’t the beginning—just one hard-earned chapter. Before it came Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which struck down sodomy laws. Before that, Romer v. Evans (1996), which invalidated a Colorado amendment banning anti-discrimination protections. And before any of them, Loving v. Virginia (1967), which struck down bans on interracial marriage—a decision grounded in the same Fourteenth Amendment principles that carried Obergefell to victory.
And long before the courts caught up, there were riots.
The Stonewall Uprising in 1969 didn’t begin with amicus briefs. It began with people—drag queens, street kids and gender-nonconforming people of color—who were tired of being brutalized, marginalized and silenced. Marsha P. Johnson. Sylvia Rivera. The sex workers, queens and outcasts who resisted not for politics, but for survival.
Three years earlier, in San Francisco, it was the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot—led again by trans women and drag queens who refused to be treated as disposable. These weren’t side characters. They were the front line.
Yet even within the LGBTQ+ movement, they were too often erased. Pushed aside and treated as inconvenient reminders of a less “marketable” history.
They weren’t extras. They were the vanguard. And they still are—even now, even as they’re once again the first to be targeted.
Sylvia Rivera once said, “I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist.” She wasn’t fighting for visibility—she was fighting for survival. And that same struggle continues today in statehouses and courtrooms across the country.
After the fall of Roe, political consultants discovered a new wedge: transgender Americans, especially children. The talking points changed. The targets changed. But the cruelty didn’t.
This isn’t a new strategy—just a nastier one. Manufacture fear, target the vulnerable and dress it up as public policy.
Statehouses across the country, including Alabama’s, quickly became laboratories of repression. Gender-affirming care for minors was banned. Teachers were silenced. Bathroom bills returned. Drag performances were criminalized. And federal courts—including the Supreme Court—allowed many of these attacks to stand, cloaking discrimination in the language of “protection.”
If you think the rollback ends here, read Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs. He argued that Obergefell, Lawrence, and Griswold—the case protecting access to birth control—were wrongly decided and should be “reconsidered.”
He notably omitted Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that protects his own interracial marriage. Apparently, some liberties are only worth defending when they’re personal.
Thomas’ opinion wasn’t a thought experiment. It was a blueprint.
James Baldwin once wrote, “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.” What Baldwin understood—what those at Stonewall and Compton’s understood—is that liberty is not bestowed. It is claimed. And it must be defended, not presumed.
Thomas Jefferson, for all his contradictions, warned that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” And that vigilance includes telling the full story—even when it challenges our own narratives. Even when it forces us to confront who got the credit and who got cut out.
So yes—celebrate. Mark the moment. Remember the couples who finally got to say “I do” with the full protection of the law behind them. But don’t mistake this anniversary for a finish line. Not while Clarence Thomas sharpens his pen. Not while trans kids are made pawns in a culture war they never asked to join. Not while the legal framework that made Obergefell possible is under steady attack.
They said love won. But the real victory wasn’t sentimental—it was moral. It came from people who demanded dignity in a country determined to deny it.
We owe it—to the next generation, to those who didn’t live to see this anniversary, and to the truth of our shared struggle—to keep fighting for a nation where no one’s dignity is up for debate. Where rights don’t shift with the political winds. And where liberty means what it’s supposed to mean: the right to live fully, freely and without apology.
