11 Years After Obergefell Americans Are Rejecting Same-Sex Marriage – Here’s Why

Americans Are Rejecting Same-Sex Marriage – Here’s Why

The Receipts for Same-Sex Marriage Are In, and They’re Changing People’s Minds

Pride Month 2026 began with some bracing news for the LGBTQIA+ movement. According to Gallup’s latest annual survey, public support for same-sex marriage, the morality of homosexual conduct, and transgenderism has declined significantly.

Support for same-sex marriage has fallen six percentage points from its high point in 2022 and 2023. The percentage of Americans who believe same-sex sexual behaviour is morally acceptable has dropped to 62%, its lowest level since 2016, the year after the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges forced states to recognise same-sex marriages.

The most dramatic shift, however, has come on transgenderism. The percentage of Americans who view attempting to change one’s sex as morally acceptable has declined eight percentage points since 2021 and now stands at just 38%.

Reversing Social Change

Why is this happening? After all, major social changes have historically become more accepted over time, not less. Americans are increasingly reconsidering what they were told because they have now lived with the results. The experiment is no longer theoretical. It has become personal.

Take interracial marriage. In 1965, 48% of Americans favoured state laws banning interracial marriage. Two years later, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such laws were unconstitutional because they amounted to “invidious racial discrimination.” While controversial in its day, that decision did not redefine the God-given meaning of marriage. Rather, it affirmed the complementarian nature of marriage. As Americans witnessed the results, public acceptance steadily grew. Today, according to Gallup, support for interracial marriage has reached a record high of 94%.

Clearly, that is not what has happened with same-sex marriage and the broader sexual ideology promoted during Pride Month.

Those of us who fought to preserve the natural and biblical understanding of marriage were often dismissed when we warned that redefining marriage would have consequences reaching far beyond marriage licenses. I remember having a discussion over lunch with the staff of a CNN primetime program, when one of the producers, who was in a same-sex relationship, asked me, “How does my relationship affect your marriage?”

“It doesn’t affect my marriage,” I replied. “But it will affect our culture. It will affect what my children are taught in school. It will normalise something that God’s word teaches is contrary to His design.”

That was always the point. The debate was never about its impact on my marriage. It was about the impact it would have in our schools, our laws, our institutions, and ultimately in the lives of the next generation.

Time could have proved those concerns unfounded. The promise of “marriage equality” was that it was simply about allowing committed same-sex couples to formalise their relationships. Americans were assured that nothing else would change.

But that is not what happened.

Evaluating Results, Not the Promises, of Same-Sex Marriage

More than a decade after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Obergefell, Americans are no longer evaluating promises, they are evaluating results. They are changing their minds not because someone crafted a better political argument, but because they have witnessed consequences many were assured would never come.

They have seen:

• Pride parades in major cities where public nudity and sexually explicit displays are celebrated in full view of families and children;

• Major corporations, universities, and professional sports organisations pressuring employees and athletes to affirm an ever-expanding list of sexual identities;

• Schools and entertainment normalising gender ideology for children while Gallup reports that the percentage of Americans identifying as LGBTQ has more than doubled since 2012;

• A growing commercial surrogacy industry that intentionally deprives children of either their mother, their father, or both;

• Marriage continuing its long decline while birth rates fall to historic lows.

Perhaps nowhere have those consequences become more visible than in the rise of transgender ideology.

The “T” in the LGBTQ acronym has been used to justify policies that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. Young children are told they can decide whether they are boys or girls because sex is merely “assigned at birth.” Teenagers are given puberty blockers that interrupt normal development. Radical surgeries with lifelong consequences are carried out on minors and young adults. Schools across the country facilitate gender transitions while keeping parents in the dark.

These are not isolated incidents. Americans have also watched biological males enter girls’ locker rooms, compete in girls’ sports, and gain access to spaces long reserved for women. Millions of Americans are now connecting the dots. They are seeing the fruit of abandoning God’s design for marriage, family, and the two sexes. Once marriage is detached from the complementary union of man and woman, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain why mothers and fathers matter, why men and women are different, or why children have a right to both.

As we mark the 11th anniversary of Obergefell, Americans are no longer arguing over predictions; they are judging outcomes. They have watched the promises of marriage redefinition play out in their schools, businesses, athletic competitions, churches, and families.

Increasingly, the American people are rendering their own verdict. The great experiment of redefining marriage and reinventing the family has produced its results. Americans are no longer judging promises — they are judging outcomes. The debate over the Sexual Revolution is no longer about its promises. It is about its consequences.

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Originally titled, “11 Years Later, the Receipts for Same-Sex Marriage Are In”.

Image via Adobe.

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ODM Daily Commentary

Let’s be honest: the LGBTQIA+ movement has been riding a wave of cultural momentum for two decades. Every poll, every election, every corporate PR campaign seemed to confirm that the revolution was unstoppable. But now, the tide is turning. And the reason is simple: people are judging the results, not the promises.

The article from The Washington Stand lays out the numbers with stunning clarity. Support for same-sex marriage has dropped six points from its peak. Support for transgenderism has collapsed by eight points since 2021. The percentage of Americans who view same-sex sexual behaviour as morally acceptable is at its lowest level since 2016. This is not a blip. It is a trend.

Why? Because the promises of the revolution have not materialised. Americans were told that redefining marriage would change nothing. It would just allow committed couples to formalise their relationships. But that was never the full agenda. Once marriage was detached from the complementarian union of man and woman, the door was opened to a cascade of consequences: the normalisation of gender ideology, the erosion of sex-based rights, the medicalisation of children, the collapse of birth rates, and the silencing of dissent.

Americans have now seen the results with their own eyes. They have watched Pride parades become exhibitions of public nudity. They have watched corporations and schools pressure employees and students to affirm every new sexual identity. They have watched biological males enter girls’ sports and locker rooms. They have watched children being told they can choose their sex. They have watched the commercial surrogacy industry deprive children of either a mother or a father.

And they have watched marriage itself continue its long decline, even as the movement that promised to “strengthen” families celebrated its victories.

The article draws a telling contrast with interracial marriage. In that case, the Supreme Court did not redefine the meaning of marriage. It affirmed the natural, God-given order. It struck down unjust discrimination while preserving the essence of the institution. And as a result, public acceptance grew steadily to 94%.

Same-sex marriage has taken the opposite path. It has not strengthened families; it has undermined the very concept of family. It has not brought clarity; it has brought confusion. It has not protected children; it has exposed them to harm.

This is why the public is changing its mind. Not because of a better argument, but because of observable reality. The receipts are in. The experiment has been run. And the verdict is clear: when you abandon God’s design, you get chaos.

The Church warned of this. We were dismissed as bigots, as haters, as fearmongers. But now, the evidence is on our side. And the tide is turning.

The revolution is not inevitable. Truth has a way of reasserting itself. And the American people are starting to remember what they once knew.

— ODM Daily