More than a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized marriage for same-sex couples across the country, Jim Obergefell still sounds a little surprised when he hears his name — especially now that conservatives are openly discussing overturning the ruling.
“It’s surreal,” he said with a quiet laugh before drinking coffee in his hotel room. “There are still things I have to remind myself of when I hear or see something. Obergefell In the news. It’s not just a case. That actually means me. ”
It’s been 11 years since then. Obergefell v. Hodges With this ruling that transformed American civil rights law, the mood of the country this famous plaintiff helped rebuild is vastly different from the euphoric summer morning of 2015, when rainbows streamed into the White House and couples flooded county clerk’s offices across the country. At the time, marriage equality felt like a milestone. Now it feels like an accident.
The man whose grief led to one of the most significant constitutional cases in modern American history spends much of his time wondering if the country could lose everything again.
“No matter what rights we enjoy, we should never feel safe,” he says.
Obergefell occupies a strange and intimate place in the American public imagination. brown It’s in the textbook. egg It became a doctrine. but Obergefell It remains very personal. The story begins in hospice care, as a dying man named John Arthur and his husband struggle to have his name correctly written on the death certificate.
That emotional clarity helped fuel the most rapid shift in public opinion in modern political history. When Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, support for marriage equality was below 30 percent nationwide, according to Gallup. Today, that percentage hovers around 70%. The approval rating among Democratic Party supporters is over 85%. A majority of young Republicans also support it.
Plaintiff Jim Obergefell holds a photo of his late husband, John Arthur, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2015.Alex Wong/Getty Images
There are currently more than 823,000 same-sex couples living in the United States, according to 2025 estimates from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Nearly 300,000 children under the age of 18 are being raised by married same-sex couples. Marriage equality reshaped inheritance rights, immigration protections, parental recognition, taxation, access to health care, and the legal structure of queer family life in America.
But this victory now brings undeniable tension for what’s next. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health OrganizationSupreme Court case overturned in 2022 Roe vs. Wade.
Since then, concerns about marriage equality have intensified. in him dobbs Justice Clarence Thomas agreed, suggesting the court should reconsider its case law protecting homosexual intimacy and marriage rights. Conservative legal activists openly discuss ways to overturn it. Obergefell. State lawmakers in the Republican-led Legislature introduced a symbolic resolution condemning the ruling. The group, which has opposed same-sex marriage for decades, has reorganized itself around a new message centered on “parental rights,” “religious freedom” and “child protection.”
The face of that effort is in Seattle.
Katie Faust, founder of the conservative nonprofit Them Before Us, is a leading architect of the Greater Than Campaign, a national coalition of 47 conservative organizations pushing for a Supreme Court reversal. Obergefell. Her strategy is to reframe the fight away from adult rights and toward children, who she claims are the “real victims” of marriage equality. Supporters of this campaign include the same organizations that have spent decades trying to reverse it. egg.
Obergefell has heard it all.
“Anger,” he said when asked what comes to mind when he hears conservatives making arguments to overturn the ruling again. “This feeling of why can’t they worry about actually making people’s lives better instead of trying to hurt them?”
The same conservative movement targeting transgender rights has also increasingly returned to anti-marriage equality rhetoric, usually framed around children and family structure. Obergefell rejected this argument without hesitation.
“Gay people are eight times more likely to adopt or foster children from the child welfare system,” he says, especially special needs children who need a parent and love. He points to decades of research showing that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well, in some cases, as children raised by straight parents.
“All these kids need a mother and a father, and that’s the only thing that can happen, and that’s the only thing that can happen? That’s bullshit,” he says.
He found one small source of judicial solace. It’s Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recognition of how much Americans have built around the right to marry and the disruption that overturning it would cause.
“The fact that Amy Coney Barrett is a voice of reason gives me a little bit of hope,” he says.
Mr. Obergefell speaks at the “Family Equality’s Night at the Pier” event in New York City.Dimitrios Kambris/Getty Images for Family Equality
For him, the current moment is more frightening than the years leading up to his Supreme Court victory. At the time, LGBTQ+ Americans were fighting for something they never had. They now face the possibility of being stripped of rights that are already woven into their lives and families.
“We enjoyed that right for 11 years and found that our relationships, marriages and families were on a much more equal footing,” he says. “And we’re going to lose it.”
That fear no longer sounds paranoid within queer America. not after that dobbs. Not after a Supreme Court that once seemed bound by precedent had shown a willingness to dismantle half a century of constitutional protection.
“For almost 50 years, people didn’t think their right to abortion was going away because the Supreme Court believed in precedent,” Obergefell said. “Well, they don’t do that anymore.”
Over the past 11 years, Obergefell has evolved from a reluctant plaintiff to more of a state witness. He has officiated over 30 weddings. He has performed at schools and Pride events across the country. Strangers constantly approach him. The couple hands him the photo. Parents tell him about their children. Queer youth confide in him.
“I have kids and young people coming out to me for the first time,” he says.
Recently, a teenager stopped him after an event at a Cleveland-area high school.
“Jim, I was three years old when that decision came out. I had only grown up in a world where I knew I could marry the person I loved in the future,” the student said.
That seems to be what bothers him most right now, more than poll numbers or constitutional doctrine. An entire generation has experienced marriage equality not as a revolutionary change, but as a normal reality.
“I am heartbroken that this 16-year-old boy and so many others could lose their right to marry the person they love,” he said.
The irony of Obergefell’s public life is that he never seems satisfied with it. He has repeatedly described himself as an introvert. He jokes that he is an “accidental activist,” but he has come to refine even that.
“John and I were quiet activists,” he says. “We’ve lived our lives openly, and there’s so much power in that.”
But grief changed him.
Arthur died in 2013 before the Supreme Court could rule in their favor. “John could have just died,” he says quietly. “But John passed away, and so much good came out of his impending death.”
He imagines how John would judge everything: public life, strangers, weddings, advocacy.
“John could walk into a room and walk out knowing everyone in the room,” he says. “If it was a party, I’d be hiding in the corner and saying, ‘Can I go home now?’
he smiled. “I think he’ll be surprised to see how much I’ve changed, and he’ll be proud.”
“Personal one-on-one interactions are far more meaningful and important to me than any of the fancy things I’ve ever done or the celebrities I’ve met,” he says.
Above all, he goes back to the simple human system of how this country has changed.
“When we got marriage equality, all of a sudden people across the country were seeing people they knew – family members, neighbors, co-workers – getting married to people of the same sex,” he says.
The country did not change because Americans suddenly accepted the Constitution. That changed because millions of people discovered that the person they already loved was gay.
“I was invited to the wedding,” Obergefell said. “It’s someone you care about.”
that may be so ObergefellA true legacy of. It’s not just a Supreme Court victory, it’s a change so intimate and commonplace that millions of Americans can no longer imagine their families without it.
“I’m on this case for a very important reason,” he says. “I loved my husband. We are worth existing and worth fighting for.”
This article is part of The Advocate’s July-August 2026 print issue, on newsstands July 7. Support and subscribe to queer media — or download the issue now on Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader.
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
