I came out in December of 2010, not quite 10 years ago, when I was 17. But the world I came out to was a very different one than we have today.

On the day I came out, same-sex marriage was legal in five states: Massachusetts (2004), Connecticut (2008), Iowa (2009), Vermont (2009), and New Hampshire (2010).

Here's where the polling stood:

A narrow majority of 55% to 40%, thought that homosexual relationships between consenting adults should be legal.

Americans as a whole opposed same sex marriage by a wide margin: 44% support and 53% opposed.

Barack Obama, the President of the United States, won in 2008 while being very clear that he opposed gay marriage (which is what everyone called it at the time). He supported Civil Unions instead.

Despite a couple recent victories, the last 40 years had been loss after loss after loss for gay people who wanted to get married, in a country that was deeply hostile to the idea that we should have equal rights. Yes, Democrats too.

I know there's a lot of young people on this website who don't remember any of this, and I want to do my best to give you all a sense of what it felt like.

Before I jump into the deeper history of this movement I think it's important to air some dirty laundry. A major, and in my opinion correct, criticism of the gay rights movement is its lack of intersectionality.

For virtually the entire history of the institutional gay rights movement (using the most common contemporary term) the people who had power within the movement were cisgender white gay men, most often working in professional jobs.

This is probably why the movement's highest-priority goal, legal marriage rights, reflects a desire for acceptance into a very normative kind of Modern Family life, whereas aggressive employment/housing nondiscrimination regulations might do more good for more people.

Entire books could be, and have been, written on the intersection of queer issues, race issues, class issues, gender issues, and the gay marriage movement. This being twitter I cannot discuss everything I'd like to (and I'm not really qualified to anyway).

This thread will mostly cover equal marriage rights because (despite all the people they leave out) they were the main focus of the movement for decades and because they have become symbolic for the acceptance of LGB people into society.

There's a lot of places I could start this story, but gay marriage as an issue rose to national concern as a result of a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling in 1993.

While gay and lesbian activists had pushed for marriage rights before this, the reaction was, in general, "lolno". Gallup didn't even start polling the issue until 1995, when they found that the public was opposed by an overwhelming 65% to 27% margin.

Same-sex marriage was such a nonissue that it was understood to be illegal *even though* state marriage laws generally did not specify that the two people getting married had to be a man and a woman.

This was true in Hawaii, where three same-sex couples (two gay and one lesbian) tried to get married, and sued in state court when they were denied. The Hawaii Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that this rejection constituted sex discrimination. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/07/us/in-hawaii-step-toward-legalized-gay-marriage.html

In this year 2020, that seems like a very obviously correct ruling, but in 1993 it was deeply controversial and spurred a national freakout at the prospect that equal protection provisions in State and National Constitutions could mean that gay people would have rights.

After this ruling, the "Defense of Marriage Acts/Amendments" were born. A "Defense of Marriage Act" is a reactionary law that creates an exception to equal protection rules (whether they be statutory or constitutional) to ensure that gay people do not get rights ever.

For legal reasons, this had to start at the Federal level. The Federal Defense of Marriage act was introduced in May of 1996. The Act, which has never actually been repealed, only overturned, has two main sections, both of which are fairly blatantly unconstitutional.

The first section permits states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. This means that if New Mexico legalizes, Texans cannot get married in New Mexico and have their marriage recognized by the State of Texas.

The second section bars the Federal government from recognizing Same Sex Marriages performed anywhere for any reason.

Basically, what happened is that people realized that unless they did something gay people would get rights and they passed laws to make sure that would not happen.

The Federal DOMA thus created a framework in which states could ensure that residents could not have access to marriage rights at all as long as they lived in the state.

Hawaii and Alaska the first to follow up with a State Defense of Marriage Amendment. In 1998 these state Amendments passed resoundingly, with 71% and 68% of the vote respectively at the ballot box.

This was also the era when liberals started talking about Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships. The idea was to create a separate kind of marriage that was not called marriage and was only for gay people, but which would have access to some of the legal benefits of marriage.

[Apparently Twitter limits the length of a thread draft! Working on the next part now!]

I will not split hairs: Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships are codified discrimination. They are, at the very best, a separate-but-equal doctrine pushed by cowards who are unwilling to fight for what is right.

There is something particularly insidious about a Civil Union, because the people who push them are clearly aware of the discrimination in the system, but refuse to actually stand against it.

In this era, conservatives would say truly disgusting things about gay people, displaying an absolutely horrific bigotry that should be neither forgotten nor forgiven. But liberals would pretend to be our allies while pushing policies that codified the discrimination we faced.

You are either equal before the law, or you are not. Conservatives believed that gay people should not be, and liberal politicians saw a problem with that but decided to pursue half measures that did not fix it.

Civil Unions typically out-polled same-sex marriage by around 10% net approval, but never enjoyed the supermajority support that same-sex marriage eventually achieved. Politicians who backed them sold us out for almost nothing, and gave us nothing in return.

In 2000, the GOP platform had this to say about gay marriage. This is a good distillation of what conservative rhetoric sounded like in this period, and it's a disgusting and dishonest attempt to hide discrimination behind nicer-sounding words.

Here's what the 2000 Democratic Platform looked like: Support for ENDA (which I believe did not include gender identity at the time) and weasel words on marriage with no firm commitments.

Polling in 1999 had support for same-sex marriage at 35% in favor and 62% opposed. There can be no doubt that firm advocacy on the part of Democrats would move those numbers, but that advocacy did not exist.

Ten years after the initial Hawaii ruling, there was another: The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the State's ban on Same-Sex Marriages violated the equal protection clause of the Massachusetts Constitution.

In response, the Massachusetts Legislature (overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats) tried to pass a law allowing Civil Unions with equal benefits as marriage. The State Supreme court blocked it.

Next, the Legislature convened a Constitutional Convention and passed an amendment to the State Constitution banning Same-Sex Marriage, in effect overturning Goodridge for all time.

The amendment passed, but the movement failed, because amending the MA state constitution requires two Constitutional Conventions in two sessions of the legislature. Before the State Constitution could be amended, Same-Sex Marriages were performed for the first time in the US.

The amendment ultimately was never revisited, because we have always been correct in this issue: Same-Sex Marriage helps some and harms none.

The other 49 states, however, did not react as positively. In 2003, Republicans started pushing a Federal Marriage Amendment. Polling showed the amendment would be supported 50% to 45% by the American public. Same Sex Marriage was opposed by 65% and supported by just 31%.

Meanwhile, Republicans also put Same-Sex Marriage on the ballot in 13 states as a means of juicing turnout and convincing swing voters. All passed by wide margins.

The 2004 GOP Platform includes this disgusting, deeply bigoted diatribe on same-sex marriage, along with other references to marriage and the family that are both deeply racist and deeply homophobic:

Here's the brief democratic response: Milquetoast platitudes and no commitment to any change or improvement of any kind.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

[Next tranche of tweets coming soon!]

2008 was a big year. Same-sex Marriage was legalized by court ruling in two states: California and Connecticut. In Connecticut it stuck; In California it did not. The California case was higher-profile, more interesting, and affected more people, so I will discuss it more.

Then-Mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom forced a crisis by instructing the SF County Clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A court ruled ,this was illegal (in fact it violated California's DOMA, which was passed 61-39 by voters in 2000).

People sued, and eventually the Supreme Court of California ruled that strict scrutiny should be applied to discrimination cases against LGB people and legalized marriages across the state beginning on June 19th, 2008.

The campaign against gay marriage started immediately. Opponents of the ruling got Prop 8, an amendment to the State Constitution of California that would end same-sex marriage in the state.

The campaign was vicious and dirty. At the end of the day, $106 million was spent by both sides. Barack Obama said that while he opposed same-sex marriage, he also opposed Prop 8 (?). McCain supported Prop 8, of course.

At the end of the day, Prop 8 won, in deep-blue California, just 12 years ago, by a margin of 52-48, on the same day that Barack Obama won the state by an overwhelming 61-37 margin. Marriages ended the next day. National support gay marriage was 40%, with to 56% opposed.

I have every reason to believe that if Barack Obama had publicly supported same-sex marriage that Prop 8 would have failed. He sold us out with a nonsensical position when he could have made a real difference with a clear one. This was a constant theme of his first term.

Speaking of Barack Obama, here's the 2008 Democratic platform: Big promises, some policy commitments, but virtually identical language to 2004 on marriage.

McCain was really no better than Bush in this regard, here's the disgusting, racist, and homophobic nonsense the 2008 Republican Party came up with.

Despite the tragic loss in California, things were finally beginning to change. For the entirety of his first term, Team Obama described his position on Same-Sex Marriage as "evolving".

Most people believe that he supported same-sex marriage the whole time, but chose not to support it publicly for political reasons. This is gross cowardice, political malpractice, and really just plain wrong. There is no other way to describe it but to say that he sold us out.

A few more small northeastern states plus Iowa legalized by court ruling. This is the era I came out in, when I first became really conscious of this issue.

June 24th, 2011 was a red letter date in the history of Same-Sex Marriage in the United States. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and then-Mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg made a big push to pass gay marriage through a legislature for the first time in American history.

Not only did it pass the Democratic-controlled lower house, it also passed the Republican-controlled upper house with mostly Democratic, but a few Republican, votes.

Anyone who knows me knows that I strongly dislike both of these people, but they deserve a lot of credit for this. They passed it through the legislature in a big state, created a big win for lots of people, and showed the nation that it would all turn out fine.

National support for same-sex marriage in 2011 was tied, with 48% support and 48% opposition.

This is when things start really moving.

In 2012, then-VP Joe Biden said in an interview that he supported same-sex marriage. Barack Obama came out in support shortly after.

National support was consistently positive for the first time, at 50-48.

In November 2012, after decades of nothing but losses at the ballot box, same-sex marriage finally won. Minnesota, Maryland, Washington State, and Maine all voted for legalization, overcoming stiff opposition.

I want to add that religious institutions fought us every step of the way on this. Virtually every denomination of Christianity, protestant and catholic, used their massive influence to fight same-sex marriage at every turn.

Frankly, I find the behavior of virtually every sect of Christianity in this long era disgusting. Most are unrepentant; indeed, most branches of Christianity will refuse to perform a same-sex marriage to this very day.

I don't care to make theological arguments, but the ones they (basically the entire establishment of Christianity, and many of its followers!) made were garbage. Bigotry finds a way. I have virtually no respect for religion after seeing it used in this way.

In 2013, part of the federal DOMA was struck down on equal protection grounds by the Supreme Court in US v. Windsor.

This created a precedent where district courts, in state after state, struck down marriage bans on the same grounds.

Finally, in 2015, in Obergefell v Hodges, SCOTUS itself ruled 5-4 that same-sex marriage would be the law of the land.

Today, same-sex marriage is overwhelmingly supported by the American public: 63% support vs 36% opposed.

The basic lesson, for me, is that you should fight for what's right, because when you fight for what's right you will change minds and you will win. And when you win you will create a durable win that won't be repealed after the next election.