Now that we have a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, some LGBTQ Americans, including one comedian and her partner, have decided to get married. The belief is that marriage equality could potentially be at risk.
Monday night, Amy Coney Barrett was sworn into the Supreme Court of the United States of America after a hotly controversial hearing process. Democratic politicians have criticized Republicans for rushing Barrett’s nomination before an election. Meanwhile, Republicans have criticized Democrats for attempting to stall the process. But the people who are most unstable during this time are LGBTQ citizens.
With Amy Coney Barrett’s past of working on a homophobic school board and her unwillingness to state that marriage equality is a right, LGBTQ people are now concerned that same-sex marriage may be revoked in the coming years. This has led to a skyrocket of gay marriages in the past few weeks.
“Who knows what will happen?” comedian Fortune Feimster told People Magazine after getting married this past week. “Hopefully, marriage equality is here to stay. But we wanted to be more proactive and get married while we know we can.”
Feimster, who is most known for being on The Mindy Project, married her partner Jacquelyn Smith on Friday in Malibu, California. The couple had been engaged since January 2018, and decided to officially marry once the Amy Coney Barrett hearings began.
“I’m not going to lie, there were some nerves about the Supreme Court. After Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, all these people started talking about gay marriage again. On the first day of their session, two of the justices brought up gay marriage. I think I had posted something on Instagram, something like, ‘Oh man, this is nerve-racking as a gay person.’ Especially because we were planning to get married. All these people were like, ‘Go get married now,’ ” Feimster recalled.
Feimster and Smith weren’t the only gay couple in America to get married recently. As Out Magazine reports, there are several others that are doing the same.
“We initially thought we’d just get into a domestic partnership, which would allow Ray to join my health care,” said Oregon resident Thomas Palmer, who married his eight-year boyfriend Raymond Salow last week, to Out. “But, the more we watched as Judge Barrett’s confirmation was becoming an assured event, and in light of not only her thoughts on the [Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare,] with its pre-existing conditions protections, but also the possibility that our federal right to marry might be stripped away, we decided to go as far as legally possible as a couple, and were married on October 22, 2020.”
Then in St. Louis, Missouri, Pastor Tori Jameson held a series of free “Pop-Up Elopements” as an act of protest against Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings and the potential implications to marriage equality.
“We are going to take care of our own,” Jameson told the trans and non-binary publication them. “You can be hateful, but there is an opportunity here to celebrate love and be joyful.”
So even in a moment of uncertainty, LGBTQ Americans are dedicated to finding the light and fighting for love. But will our worries and concerns become confirmed in the next few years? Scary times, indeed.
Source: People Magazine, Out Magazine, them.,
