Will More States Try to Protect Marriage Equality With Trump Back in Office?

From election day to 12:30 p.m in the evening on Wednesday, Project Trevora non-profit LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization, contacts for live messaging, texting and crisis hotline services increased by 125 percent compared to a typical day. The organization expects that to “potentially only increase,” CEO James Black said Nation in a statement, as LGBTQ+ advocates fear a second Trump term could lead to overturning the Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges— which required states to recognize same-sex marriages.

Some states were prepared. On Election Day, voters in California, Colorado and Hawaii passed proposals to protect same-sex marriage rights. The amendments would ultimately either prevent the state legislature from enacting any restrictions on same-sex marriage, remove constitutional prohibitions, or specifically enshrine same-sex marriage rights in the state Constitution. According to the Traffic Promotion Project, 32 states are home almost 8.5 millionor 61 percent of LGBTQ+ adults now have constitutional amendments or bans on same-sex marriage that would take effect when Obergefell were canceled.

“It’s great that we won these victories this week, and we hope that other states will pursue similar challenges to discriminatory laws,” said Logan Casey, director of policy research at the equality-focused think tank Movement Advancement Project. Nation. In a deep blue state like Oregon, where the constitution prohibits same-sex marriage, similar amendments to California, Hawaii or Colorado could be passed. But in a more competitive state — for example, in Wisconsin, where the Republicans is stored control of both houses of state legislatures—such an amendment is a tougher prospect.

Despite the loss of Kamala Harris on Tuesday, the marriage equality amendment was passed lightly; California with 61 percent voting, Colorado with 63.6 percentand Hawaii with 51 percent. The amendment’s victory, along with Harris’ national loss, said Don Hyder-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas and an expert on public opinion on same-sex marriage, showed the electoral weakness and unpopularity of the Biden administration. “If you look at a state like Wisconsin, for example, where Tammy Baldwin found herself in a very tight re-election race, if the numbers are accurate at this point, she’s definitely ahead of Harris in that state,” Hyder-Markel said. “It’s very difficult when the economy, at the very least, is bad for people, to put that ahead of a sitting president.”

While the same-sex amendment could be replicated, Democratic lawmakers are unlikely to prioritize social equality over “kitchen table issues” over the next four years, Haider-Markel said. In his view, the party’s emphasis caused losses among working-class voters and a potential GOP victory among non-white males. But about 64 percent of people support same-sex marriage in states where it would be illegal Obergefell were canceled as of March 2024 the report from the Institute for the Study of Public Religion. Although conservatives can claim success works further According to Casey, the broad approval of same-sex marriage among voters makes him think it’s not necessarily fair to “worry about a marriage amendment in a completely blue state.”

Seventeen states allow citizens to initiate directly constitutional amendments– Although their requirements are different. According to Haider-Markel, successfully advocating for a same-sex marriage measure requires advocates to decide whether they want to spend time and effort on a measure that “may or may not be important down the road,” rather than organizing candidates who support their point of view.

But many of those who can be hurt by overturning Obergefell they say a motion to vote is a worthy cause. Acadia Bradley, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found Trump’s victory devastating, especially given the hope she had felt heading into the election in recent weeks. During Trump’s presidency from 2016 to 2020, Bradley felt that homophobia increased – as if Trump “almost (gave) them a free pass or a little more courage to stand up to their hatred of us.”

Wisconsin is one of the 24 states both laws and the constitution prohibit same-sex marriage. But the state does not have a citizens’ initiative mechanism — which means that to repeal the constitutional language, legislators would have to propose an amendment to the constitution, which would then be brought to the voters. Although Democratic lawmakers have tried to delete both a constitutional and statutory ban on the language, Republican state lawmakers have stalled the proposals in legislative committees and ridiculed them as unnecessary. State Assembly Speaker Robin Voss, a Republican, did not respond to a question from Nation asking if he would support such proposals in the upcoming legislative session.

Students like Bradley believe it’s natural to worry about the future given Trump’s past rhetoric toward LGBTQ+ people, and she wants Wisconsin lawmakers to repeal the bans. “I believe that it should have been done already. But the pressure is definitely a bit more now.”