Now They’re Coming for LGBTQ+ Families and Marriage Equality
Ben Cable (Originally posted on Substack)
Op-Ed: In 2025, under the second Trump administration and the authoritarian blueprint known as Project 2025, the United States is watching decades of civil progress unravel. What began as an assault on reproductive freedom has rapidly spread to public education, science, journalism, and now, unsurprisingly, to LGBTQ+ rights. And at the top of the hit list? Marriage equality.
With political operatives, right-wing think tanks, and Supreme Court justices signaling the need to “redefine” marriage, the future of more than 700,000 same-sex married couples in this country hangs by a thread. What may sound hypothetical or alarmist to some is a coordinated and well-funded effort to strip LGBTQ+ Americans of the most basic legal protections. The question isn’t if this happens. It’s how fast.
Because history has shown us: it doesn’t take long.
My Backstory
In 1990, I met Marcial Bolina McCarthy, a handsome Filipino Army vet. A year later, in front of over 200 of our family and friends, we had an “illegal” marriage in a chapel located in Glendale, CA. Within two years, we sued the State of California to have our marriage recognized legally (Cable-McCarthy vs. James H. Dempsey) after the County Clerk denied our marriage application.
What we were fighting for was recognition of our relationship, visitation rights, healthcare, adoption rights…. The religious right wing said we wanted “special rights”. We were fighting for the same rights and responsibilities afforded to heterosexual couples.
I had the privilege of sharing the podium with Rev. Jesse Jackson on the 1993 March on Washington at the National Press Club. At one point, in front of the media, I asked the Reverend if he supported gay marriage, and he looked at me incredulously and said, “And why not?” Today, I can laugh at how stupid a question it was. But, personally, needed the affirmation. Marcial and I had an uphill, costly, and emotional battle with little support.
We became plaintiffs in one of the earliest legal battles for marriage equality when it was considered political suicide. We weren’t celebrities. We were ordinary Americans demanding dignity, safety, and legal recognition.
Support for our same-gender marriage fight came mainly from the heterosexual community. Gay and Lesbian organizations were busy with other issues facing the communities at that time, such as Gays in the Military and AIDS.
Our team consisted mainly of our family and our attorney, Paul S. Marchand. Eventually, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred shared her support, and the ACLU filed an amicus brief on our behalf, and a band of others joined our cause. Ultimately, we were denied review by the California Supreme Court.
Decades would pass before our marriage would be legal. I like to believe we helped pave the way for Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.
Before Marriage Equality: The Criminalization of Love
Until 2003, sodomy laws still criminalized same-sex relationships in many U.S. states. It took the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas to strike them down finally.
Before that ruling:
- In 1955, police raided a Halloween party in San Mateo, California, arresting 36 men simply for dancing with one another (San Mateo Times).
- In 1966, raids on gay bars in New York City were so frequent that the Stonewall Uprising erupted in 1969 as a direct act of resistance (Library of Congress).
- In Washington, D.C., the Lavender Scare saw hundreds fired from government jobs for being gay, as documented by the National Archives.
- Across America in the ’70s and ’80s, newspapers printed names and addresses of men entrapped in police stings at parks and bars, destroying lives with the stroke of a headline.
J. Edgar Hoover’s War on Queer Americans
But no figure looms larger in the institutional persecution of LGBTQ+ Americans than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. During the Lavender Scare, Hoover’s FBI compiled thousands of surveillance files on suspected gay men and lesbians. Under the guise of “national security,” agents monitored, blackmailed, and ruined lives.
According to historian Douglas M. Charles, Hoover maintained massive secret programs to identify and purge “sex deviates” from federal employment, including teachers, clerks, and soldiers. There were no trials. No appeals. Only shame and silence.
Sound Familiar? It Should.
Because the Hoover playbook is being repackaged in real time, Trump’s allies, guided by Project 2025 and platforms like The Heritage Foundation, have launched a modern war on LGBTQ+ rights using new tools: digital surveillance, extremist watch lists, and state-backed moral crusades.
A June 2024 report by The Intercept reveals how these operatives propose building databases of “ideological threats,” including LGBTQ+ activists, educators, and community organizers. The government is already surveilling Pride events and targeting LGBTQ+ immigrants at the border.
Meanwhile, political figures like Ron DeSantis and Josh Hawley are criminalizing drag, banning books, and silencing teachers who dare discuss LGBTQ+ history (NPR).
And Trump himself has used coded, but unmistakable language to call for his Justice Department to “go after the sickos” about LGBTQ+ health providers and educators (Washington Post). This is the same dehumanizing rhetoric Hoover used in the ’50s, only now with millions of social media followers echoing it in real-time.
This Isn’t a Warning About the Future – It’s a Report From the Present
This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will privately consider whether to accept a petition from former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who in 2015 refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. This 2015 landmark decision legalized gay and lesbian marriage nationwide. Davis argues her religious freedoms were violated and calls Obergefell “egregiously wrong,” invoking Justice Clarence Thomas’s post-Dobbs concurrence that urged revisiting substantive-due-process precedents. While legal experts widely expect the Court to decline the case, the justices will first decide whether to hear it in a closed-door conference this fall, marking the first formal challenge to Obergefell since it was handed down.
If LGBTQ+ marriage is reversed, as many “conservatives” are calling for, it will be immediate and devastating:
- Families will lose custody rights overnight.
- Hospital visitations will be denied.
- Health insurance benefits, survivor pensions, and tax protections will be erased.
- Adoptions could be challenged or invalidated.
And make no mistake: once marriage falls, other rights follow. Because bigotry doesn’t stop, it escalates, as it did during the Lavender Scare. As it did during the AIDS crisis. As it’s doing right now.
“First They Came…”
We’ve seen this strategy before. First, they came for Roe. Then they came for trans healthcare. Then they came for schoolbooks. Now they’re coming for marriage.
As Holocaust survivor Martin Niemöller warned:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist…”First they came for women’s rights, and then for gay and lesbian rights…
We must not wait to speak until no one is left.
What You Can Do Now
- Speak out – Normalize LGBTQ+ rights in public, in schools, in faith communities, and online. Silence is complicity.
- Donate to legal defense funds – Groups like Lambda Legal, GLAD, and the ACLU are on the front lines.
- Vote in every election – Local officials appoint judges, control schools, and decide what rights are protected or erased.
- Support queer media and journalists – Tell the stories that authoritarian regimes want buried.
My Final Word
Let’s be clear, American Rights are under attack. The United States has stood at this cliff before and been pulled back by collective action, protest, and courage. But cliffs don’t get shallower the second time around. They get steeper. The fall gets faster.
Do I believe the United States Supreme Court will overturn gay marriage? Hate to say this, but I am not sure. Do I think that United States citizens and our visitors will continue to lose rights under Donald Trump’s administration? Yes, for that I am certain, and we must fight to keep as much as we can.
Fight. Write. Call. Pod. Text.
✊🏽 Citizen Ben was here.
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