Ben Nelson and Adam Weinberger’s last-minute decision to elope next month was made in the heat of the moment, not only in the name of love. After being together more than three years, they were already scheduled to marry next October. But things changed, they said, once Donald Trump was re-elected.
“We kind of decided that we would take a step back and do what we think is necessary for our lives, not necessarily what our first choice was,” Weinberger, 31, a veterinarian, said.
They are one of many gay couples in recent weeks who are rushing to get married, start fertility treatments and take other measures out of fear that some of their rights might be rescinded during a second Trump administration.
“This is not what equality looks like,” Nelson, 32, who is in photography school, said.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the United States since the Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, which made state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Before then, 37 states and U.S. territories had already legalized marriage equality.
But some gay couples say they fear that after it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, unraveling half a century of legal precedent, the Supreme Court will rescind their right to marry next.
Those concerns were stoked in 2020 when Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued blistering rebukes of Obergefell and signaled that they would be open to reversing it. Thomas again expressed an interest in overturning Obergefell in his concurring opinion in the decision to overturn Roe.
Mary Bonauto, who argued on behalf of same-sex couples in Obergefell and now serves as the civil rights project director at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, dismissed the idea that the same-sex marriage ruling will be overturned.
“I understand that there are things about these times that introduce a lot of uncertainty in people’s lives. I understand that,” she added. “But right now, and certainly for the foreseeable future, marriage equality is not one of the things that would change.”
While fear among some gay and lesbian couples is real, it’s unclear if the incoming Trump administration has the appetite to roll back the legalization of same-sex marriage. Trump himself has not indicated that he intends to do so.
Allies of the former and incoming president point to his Cabinet picks — including Scott Bessent, who is gay and married, for treasury secretary — and the same-sex weddings hosted at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in recent years. The GOP also removed language that had been in its platform for decades that explicitly defined marriage as being between “one man and one woman.”
