Posted on 06/16/2026 10:17:56 AM PDT by Red Badger
Same-sex marriage is not on the rocks — yet. But the LGBT triumphalism of a few years ago is receding. Support for same-sex relationships is dropping, businesses are less inclined to pay for “pride” festivities, and Republican leaders are reclaiming June from the rainbow.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The issue was supposed to be settled, with the rainbow triumphant and opposition receding to a few marginalized religious weirdos. But in the years since the Supreme Court invented a right to same-sex marriage in the Obergefell decision, the effects have become clear, and they aren’t what we were promised.
Same-sex marriage was sold to the public as loving and harmless. We were told that “love is love” and that “marriage equality” would have no negative effects on the rest of us. But the slope was slippery, and assurances of “live and let live” proved to be a lie.
There are two main causes why slippery slope warnings proved more prophetic than fallacious. First, there is the premise of same-sex marriage, which is that male and female don’t matter in marriage except for subjective preference. Objections to this are dismissed as bigotry. These ideas have consequences, and they have since been made manifest. The second (and related) cause of the slippery slope is that LGBT groups and their allies wanted far more than same-sex marriage. They weren’t going to put a ring on it and then declare victory and go home. Rather, everyone and everything, from schools to sports, had to bow to the rainbow flag.
The convergence of these factors was clear in the trans revolution that immediately followed Obergefell. Ideologically, transgender ideology is an obvious extension of the logic of same-sex marriage; if male and female don’t matter in marriage and parenthood, they don’t matter anywhere. And organizationally, the gay-rights movement had already spent years preparing to pivot to transgenderism after same-sex marriage.
So Americans learned that same-sex marriage was a bait and switch. It was promoted as a way to include same-sex couples in normal life, but instead, it unleashed radicalism into normal life. Democrats were, and still are, all in, from the topless trans activist shaking his fake breasts at the Biden White House, to putting men in women’s prisons, to advancing legislation that erases the words mother and father and replace them with “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.”
Likewise, polygamy, rebranded as polyamory, is not only promoted in left-wing media, but it is now being legally recognized in some deep-blue jurisdictions. Opponents of same-sex marriage were denounced as alarmist bigots for predicting this would happen; now The New York Times is reporting favorably as it happens.
As the radicalism intensified, so did efforts to punish dissent. They weren’t just going after the baker who didn’t want to do custom work for a same-sex wedding but after spas that wanted to keep naked men out of the women’s area. Rainbow woke made a lot of enemies out of normal people who are now determined that it must not regain power. And so some Republicans are starting to find their spines.
But it is not just post-Obergefell weirdness and wokeness that is turning Americans against same-sex marriage. Americans have also gained clarity about the ordinary evils of same-sex marriage, such as male homosexual couples buying babies via commercial surrogacy and intentionally depriving them of their mothers forever.
Pretending babies do not have mothers exemplifies the rejection of reality inherent in same-sex marriage. The basis for marriage as a social and legal institution is not adult sexual and romantic desires but the complementarity of male and female, a complementarity that gave each of us life. That is fundamental human reality, not irrational bigotry.
Marriage is rooted in human nature, and trying to have its benefits while denying that nature is harmful, individually and socially. Marriage is about the two halves of humanity coming together in committed relationships that continue the human species. It is both foundational to the good order and flourishing of society, and a source of some of the highest joys and greatest fulfillments possible in this life. And for Christians, it is also an image of our fulfilment with Christ in heaven.
Marriage encompasses everything from basic biological truths to the mysteries of the divine. But our culture has reduced it to a subjective expression of sexual and romantic partnership, dissolvable at will; marriage is just a contract — and not the hardest to get out of. This reductive view of marriage dispenses with both commitment and complementarity, which is to say, with the point of marriage.
The invention of same-sex marriage was not the primary, let alone only, cause of the decline in marriage. But it did make matters worse, and it is now an obstacle to getting back on track. We cannot restore a right understanding of marriage while pretending that sex, in every sense, is irrelevant to it.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of "Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All" (Ignatius, 2025). children's rights Law LGBT marriage
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Jim
Small percentage of the population.
Time to take the whole LGBTABCD+ BS off the pedestal and stop promoting it everywhere, from corporate marketing to TV commercials - please end the hype.
Americans were never in love with it to begin with. More false premise and lies from the dying propaganda machine.
Spot on,,!
They went right after the children. They are proven deviant monsters as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but at the most basic level is the constant harping on “pride,” the outrageous behavior we are supposed to applaud, and the insufferable and unending claim of victim hood by the most pampered minority in history
The teachers are using he LGBT doctrine to pit children against their own parents. And if parents try to fight this in some states, they children can be removed from them.
Same-sex “marriage” and “gay” “pride” were never anything other than a bitter pill that Americans and others were made to swallow.
If one refused, the penalty was being labeled a “bigot”. If one’s church did not display rainbow banners, especially in June, it was labeled as a “bigoted” church. Of course, nearly the entire Orthodox Church must wear the “bigot” label.
Nowadays, there is fortunately increasing resistance to “gay pride”. Nevertheless, major cities still raise the rainbow flag in June, and all the gaysbians come out in large numbers to openly cavort.
Resist, resist, resist!
^ Ugh. I need to slow down on my typing. That second paragraph was poorly written (he -> the; they -> the).
Curiously I found a gay YouTuber who’s 100% against the trans agenda. Says that the majority of children being transed would grow up to be LGB and that “gender-affirming care” is just medicalized conversion therapy to trans the gay away. I don’t know how common his viewpoint is among homosexuals, but it is interesting that the LGB and the T are not as united as the media likes to pretend.
The brass ring in this idiot merry-go-round was always getting the straight community to pay for everything as a penance for past “oppression”. That turned into direct state repression of dissent so fast it made our heads spin. People losing their livelihoods for objecting isn’t about freedom.
LGB has never cared much for T..................
It’s all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$....................
Totally agree. Many people and organizations were pressured into the LGBxyz agenda, not organic.
There is no end.
And normal, that thing that is keeping everything together is pushed so far away that you can not even see it any more.
When the gays first came out of their closets they said all they wanted was to be left alone to engage in their queer lifestyles. My how times have changed. Now they want the country to bow down and let them have access to our children along with the drag queens, bisexuals and sexually confused folks.
2. They wouldn't keep away from the kids.
If they had accepted the Florida law where teachers couldn't talk about sexuality with elementary school kids at all it would be better. But they immediately turned it into "Don't say gay" and fought to push their agenda full time to the youngest children.
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