“Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?”
This was the question asked in a Gallup poll in May of a random sample of 1,001 adults. It found that 65 percent of those polled said the marriages should be valid, with just 32 percent saying they should not; the rest (3 percent) had no opinion.
When this survey question was first asked in 1996, only 27 percent of folks agreed that same-sex marriages (referred to for the first decade or so as “homosexual marriages”) should be valid. It climbed over the years to a peak of 71 percent in 2022 and 2023 during the Biden-Harris Administration.
The decline from that level started in 2023 and continued over the years to this most recent low.
June 12 is known as “Loving Day,” because that was the day in 1967 when the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in a case called Loving v. Virginia, that bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional. A 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, mandated all U.S. states to allow same-sex marriages, putting it on par with what Loving did for interracial marriages.
I was born in 1957 and attended segregated schools in Huntsville, Alabama, until 1968. I can recall seeing signs saying “No Coloreds” or “Whites Only” well into the 1970s. Yet I, as a Black lesbian, would go on to become one of the first people in the United States to marry a same-sex partner.
It was February 12, 2004, when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told city officials to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. My then-partner called me at work with this surprising news. I worked for CBS and we went to the courthouse during our lunch break. Many folks came to my office to congratulate me on breaking barriers.
Thus we became one of the roughly 4,000 same sex couples who got married at San Francisco’s city hall between this date and March 11—a twenty-nine-day span dubbed the “Winter of Love.” The marriages were voided by the California Supreme Court because, at that time, California law defined marriage as between a man and a woman. It ruled that Newsom did not have the authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Therefore, the marriages were void.
I married again in 2008, and that marriage was upheld by the Supreme Court after Proposition 8 was passed the same year in California. That marriage dissolved and I married again in 2019 when 62 percent of folks in the country agreed with the validity and equal rights for same-sex marriages.
Civil rights leader and Georgia politician Julian Bond drew a direct parallel between race and sexual orientation: “When I am asked, ‘Are gay rights civil rights?’ my answer is always, ‘Of course they are.’ ”
Being both Black and lesbian (Blesbian), I have often had occasion to reflect on both the slowness of legislation to enforce civil rights, followed by even more delays in the acceptance of these rights in the court of public opinion.
It is disheartening to know that, in 2026, LGBTQ+ rights are not valued as much as they were in their peak in 2022 and 2023—and even then, in my opinion, that percentage should have been higher.
All adult humans should have the right to marry, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Here’s to hoping that, in years to come, those rights will be recognized by all.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.