July 26th 2015 is a date that will go down in history for a couple of reasons – one being the news of the horrific jihadist attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait. The other being that, thanks to a 5-4 ruling from the US Supreme Court, same sex couples can now legally marry in all fifty US states.
The LGBT community won in this particular chapter of the ‘culture wars’, as they are so often called, and for many same sex couples this landmark decision is a sea change in the American political climate. However, whilst this is wonderful for so many loving couples out there, at the risk of sounding like a pessimist, there is still a long way to go for LGBT rights. We need look no further than the inflammatory comments made by Justice Scalia in his dismissive summary of the case:
The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.
Although this did manage to get #AskTheNearestHippie trending on Twitter, it still remains extremely inflammatory language, especially from a Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore, another justification he made earlier in his dissent was that, in accepting same sex marriage as a right under the constitution, the other justices were “comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendments ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same sex marriage in 2003”. Essentially, because discrimination in this form had always existed, it must be ridiculous to assume that it should be curbed by the Constitution. Of course, Scalia had no such objections to the courts weighing in on other sweeping reforms to things like campaign finance, which coincidently had no bearing on his Roman Catholic beliefs.
There are far more examples of how the LGBT community still have a way to go in achieving complete equality in the United States. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are still twenty eight states which allow discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and thirty one which allow discrimination on grounds of gender identity. This, at a time when 41% of transgender people surveyed report having attempted suicide.
LGBT people are also more likely to be in poverty, with 24% of lesbian and bisexual women being described as ‘poor’, as opposed to 19% of their heterosexual counterparts. The statistics are even worse for LGBT people of colour. And as for the transgender community, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, transgender people are four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 and twice as likely to be unemployed as the typical person in the U.S.
For a country which prides itself on being a beacon of freedom and democracy in the world, the fact that the LGBT community still faces these kinds of hardships is appalling. Still, this is a time for celebration. The Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v Hodges does represent a start in the right direction for LGBT people, and with many loving couples rushing out over the last few days to finally tie the knot, perhaps there will be a chance for us to show the 37% of Americans who still oppose same sex marriage that love is love, regardless of gender.
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