Texas judges can decline to perform same-sex weddings because of their “sincerely held religious belief” and not be in violation of the rules on judicial impartiality, according to the Texas Supreme Court.
A lawsuit is being brought by Judge Brian Keith Umphress in Jack County, Texas, against the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct. In November 2019, the commission issued a “public warning” to Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace who recused herself from officiating at same-sex weddings, according to coverage by Legal Newsline.
Umphress later sued the commission’s members, citing that a judge’s refusal to officiate only same-sex unions could result in sanctions by the commission and violate his federal constitutional rights.
He is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restrain the commission from punishing judges for not performing same-sex marriage ceremonies, for either religious or secular reasons.
Costa Rica: The constitutional court recognized the right of same-sex couples to share maternity leave, just like heterosexual couples can.
The government has proposed a gender recognition bill, but the state Social Security Fund rejected a part of it that would require it to cover sex reassignment surgery. It’s still being debated.
The ministry of education announced it was eliminating sex education and policies around homophobic bullying in schools, and also eliminating the position of LGBTI commissioner.
Honduras: The country emerged as another locus of far-right drift after US President Trump intervened in the presidential election to declare his preferred candidate. The close election still hasn’t declared a winner nearly a month later. Whoever is ultimately declared winner will be further to the right of outgoing president Xiomara Castro, who had vocally supported LGBTQ rights (though didn’t accomplish much in the face of a hostile congress).
El Salvador: The country’s dictator has gotten cozy with Trump, hosting the CECOT detention and torture center where America is deporting its undesirable migrants.
Caribbean
St. Lucia: The biggest positive development in the region was the court ruling that decriminalized gay sex in Saint Lucia. This court case was part of a coordinated strategy by Caribbean LGBTQ activists who filed simultaneous cases in five states challenging their sodomy laws, and this was the fourth positive ruling. Unlike other rulings in this series, the court did not find that the constitution specifically bars sexual orientation discrimination. We’re still waiting on a ruling from Grenada, which could come any day now. Or a year from now. Look, the court operates on Caribbean time.
An unrelated sodomy case in St. Vincent and the Grenadines failed in 2024, and I have not heard anything about an appeal. And another unrelated case…
Trinidad & Tobago: And the shock negative development of 2025. In March, the court of appeal overturned a 2018 ruling that decriminalized sodomy in the country. Caribbean time is Caribbean time, but overturning a seven-year-old decision is crazy. The case is now headed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London for a final ruling, and it’s really unclear how it’ll rule.
The case turns on the “savings clause” in the constitution, which insulates pre-independence laws from court scrutiny, and whether it applies. The plaintiff said it didn’t apply, since the legislature had repealed the pre-independence sodomy law with a stronger one in 1986 and 2000. The court found that the savings clause applied, but reverted the law to the pre-independence version, which sounds like pure legislating from the bench to me!
The Privy Council has been pretty strongly in favor of upholding savings clauses in the recent past, but this one is quite a pretzel. They ought to also be bound by international treaty obligations (of both the UK and Trinidad) to decriminalize sodomy. In all likelihood, we won’t see a ruling until 2027 or later, fully a decade after the original case was filed.
Cuba: The National Assembly passed a law allowing gender change by self-identification, and also recognized common-law marriage for the first time.
Dominican Republic: The biggest news was that the Constitutional Court struck down laws that criminalized police officers and military personnel who have gay sex. The ruling also clearly established for the first time that the Dominican constitution bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, both in government services and in employment. It’s likely that over time this will become a foundational ruling to assert further LGBTQ rights in the country.
This is also fortunate, because congress also passed a new penal code this year over the objections of civil society groups, because it failed to include prohibitions on discrimination and hate crimes, and didn’t decriminalize abortion.
The court ruling also prompted me to do a bit of a Wikipedia dive updating entries on LGBTQ rights in numerous Caribbean countries, to clarify or update that they no longer bar gay servicemembers in their laws.
Dutch Territories: Sint Maarten is the last Netherlands territory where same-sex marriage is not yet legal, after the constitutional court made it legal in Aruba and Curacao last year. It seems like all it will take is a court challenge to bring equal marriage to Sint Maarten, but I don’t believe one has been filed yet.
UK Territories: Gays scored a surprise win in Turks and Caicos Islands, where a binational couple won a court of appeal ruling that the government must recognize overseas same-sex marriages for the purposes of immigration. The court explicitly did not rule on whether same-sex marriage must be legalized or recognized – the constitution specifically restricts it.
In the Cayman Islands, the UK Privy Council upheld the territory’s civil partnership law, which was imposed by the governor in 2020 after a similar bill failed in the legislature by one vote.
A long-threatened referendum on banning same-sex marriage in the UK Virgin Islands’ constitution failed to materialize. The territory is in the process of overhauling its constitution, and it may eventually emerge as part of a reform package.
None of Britain’s Caribbean territories recognize same-sex marriage.
South America
Argentina: The country’s far-right drift continued with the encouragement of the US President. In February, President Javier Milei banned gender care for minors by decree, but the federal court overturned the ban two months later. Legislators have since proposed an omnibus anti-trans bill, which we should watch out for in 2026.
Earlier this month, the government introduced a bill that would stiffen penalties for anti-LGBT hate crimes as part of a broader crime reform bill.
Brazil: The superior court of justice ruled in favor of a nonbinary person who wished to have their gender recorded as such in the civil registry. The decision was limited to the individual plaintiff, but ought to form a precedent for future cases. Brazil already allows a X marker on passports.
The supreme court also invalidated local laws that banned discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools, and ruled that a domestic violence law that was originally drafted to only apply to women in heterosexual couples also applies to same-sex couples and trans women.
Meanwhile, the federal council of medicine issued a regulation banning gender-affirming care for minors, but simultaneously lowering the minimum age for genital surgery from 25 to 21. The regulation is being appealed.
Congress is also very slowly debating a bill that would finally codify same-sex marriage and adoption into federal law, following the supreme court ruling on the issue way back in 2013. Look for this to come to a vote in late 2026/27.
Chile: Another country that’s fallen to the extreme right-wing regional drift following presidential elections last month.
But before that happened, outgoing President Boric signed a new adoption law that finally ends discrimination against same-sex couples and couples in civil unions in adoptions. Previously, married heterosexual couples were given priority in adoptions.
Congress defunded the Gender Identity Support Program over the objections of the President Boric. It’ll continue for now under the Ministry of Health, but is a likely target of incoming President Kast, whose objections to LGBTQ rights are well documented. The constitutional court ruled in favor of the mother of a 10-year-old trans girl who wanted to update her daughter’s legal identity, although the law only allows that after age 14. The ruling was limited to the specific case.
Colombia: Congress failed again to pass a conversion therapy ban, though a new bill is pending.
Guyana: LGBTQ issues became a surprise issue in national elections this year, with nearly all parties pledging to repeal the country’s sodomy law. Reelected President Ali pledged to work with the local queer advocacy group on repealing the law and improving laws for the community, though same-sex marriage appears off the table for now. One to watch in 2026.
Guyana has become an incredibly rich nation basically overnight due to the new exploitation of off-shore oil fields, which has led to an influx of visitors, investors, and tourism, which may be helping drive some of this – not to mention the string of successful court challenges to sodomy laws in the near Caribbean. But that attention also came with a threat of annexation by neighboring Venezuela earlier in the year, though that appears to have subsided amidst ongoing threats of a US invasion of that country.
Peru: Bills seeking civil unions or same-sex marriage failed to advance in congress in 2025, but an administrative court for the first time recognized a same-sex marriage for the purposes of dividing property. About eleven cases are pending in courts across the country seeking same-sex marriage or recognition of foreign marriages.
Congress passed a bill that eliminates the concept of “gender” from law and replaces it with biological sex only. The law also eliminates the goal of “gender equality” and replaces it with “equity” and “equality of opportunity.” The law has been roundly condemned by the international community as retrograde and endangering the rights of women and girls.
Congress was also working on a bill to ban trans women from public bathrooms.
Suriname: In February, a review panel overturned a 2023 ruling by the constitutional court and ordered the government to record two same-sex couples who’d married overseas into the civil registry, essentially requiring recognition of same-sex marriage. The ruling also ordered the government to amend legislation to allow it, although a new civil code that came into effect in May specifically bans same-sex marriage. For now, the ruling only applies to the two couples, but others can sue for the right to be registered as well. The decision can still be appealed, but I haven’t seen any news on it since.
A court found Japan’s refusal to legalize same-sex marriage was constitutional Friday in the last of six cases that are expected to be brought to the Supreme Court for a final and definitive ruling, possibly next year.
The Tokyo High Court said marriage under the law is largely expected to be a union between men and women in a decision that reversed a lower court ruling last year and was the first loss at high courts in the six cases brought by those seeking equal marriage rights.
Judge Ayumi Higashi said a legal definition of a family as a unit between a couple and their children is rational and that exclusion of same-sex marriage is valid. The court also dismissed damages of 1 million yen ($6,400) each sought by eight sexual minorities seeking equal marital rights.
Plaintiffs and their lawyers said the decision was unjust but they were determined to keep fighting through the Supreme Court.
“I’m so disappointed,” plaintiff Hiromi Hatogai told reporters outside the court. “Rather than sorrow, I’m outraged and appalled by the decision. Were the judges listening to us?”
“We only want to be able to marry and be happy, just like anyone else,” said another plaintiff, Rie Fukuda. “I believe the society is changing. We won’t give up.”
With all six high court cases done, the Supreme Court is expected to handle all appeals and make a decision.
Though discrimination still exists at school, work and elsewhere, public backing for legalizing same-sex marriage and support in the business community have rapidly increased in recent years.
Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized countries that does not recognize same-sex marriage or provide any other form of legally binding protection for LGBTQ+ couples.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi ‘s conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party is the main opponent of same-sex marital rights in Japan. The government has argued that marriage under civil law does not cover same-sex couples and places importance on natural reproduction.
More than 30 plaintiffs have joined the lawsuits on marriage equality filed across Japan since 2019. They argue that civil law provisions barring same-sex marriage violate the Constitutional right to equality and freedom of marriage.
Friday’s ruling was only the second that found the current government policy constitutional after the 2022 Osaka District Court decision.
The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling that all nations in the European Union (EU) must recognize lawful same-sex marriages that were performed in other EU countries. Previously, a country could refuse to recognize a marriage if it had taken place in another country and did not align with its own laws.
The court declared that EU citizens have a right to “a normal family life” regardless of borders. “When they create a family life in a host member state,” they said, “in particular by virtue of marriage, they must have the certainty to be able to pursue that family life upon returning to their member state of origin.”
Citizens of the European Union have the right to freedom of movement between the different nations within the union. The court suggested that this right, as well as the right to “respect for private and family life,” would be breached if one country could refuse to acknowledge a lawful marriage from another country.
The court added in a press release, “Member States are therefore required to recognize, for the purpose of the exercise of the rights conferred by EU law, the marital status lawfully acquired in another Member State.”
The case was brought to the Luxembourg-based court on behalf of a Polish couple who had been married in Berlin, Germany, where same-sex marriage is recognized. When, years later, they returned to their home country, they submitted their marriage certificate, which was in German, to the Polish government to be transcribed and recognized in the Polish civil register.
The Polish government denied their request, as the country does not recognize same-sex marriages. With this new ruling, they will no longer be able to refuse legally.
Of the 27 EU member states, only 18 have legalized same-sex marriage.
LGBTQ+ rights have taken some big hits in Poland in recent years. The far-right Law and Justice Party held power from 2015 to 2023 and enacted a range of anti-LGBTQ+ policies during that time. It was only in April of this year that the last “LGBT-free” zone created by the party was finally repealed.
Poland is currently led by a coalition government. The prime minister, Donald Tusk, campaigned on introducing same-sex civil unions and has pushed for such legislation to be passed. However, Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki of the Law and Justice Party, has said that he would veto any legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage.
South Korea made a quiet but meaningful policy change in October. For the first time, the national census now allows same-sex couples living together to identify each other as “spouse” in official records.
While this adjustment does not confer any legal rights, it marks a symbolic step in recognizing LGBTQ+ households in the state’s demographic data.
But as same-sex couples slowly appear in national statistics, legal marriage still remains out of reach. And public support for it is not growing. In fact, it is recently shrinking.
Two major opinion surveys in 2025 have confirmed the trend. In a Hankook Research poll, 31 percent of South Koreans said they supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, down from 36 percent in 2021. In a separate survey by Gallup Korea, 34 percent backed legalization while 58 percent opposed it, a reversal that returns the numbers to where they stood nearly a decade ago.
Although many advocates have long assumed that rising visibility and generational change would drive progress, the latest data presents a different picture. The Korea Herald consulted two advocates who argue that it may be time to ask a different question: Does same-sex marriage need broad public support to move forward, or can the law lead the way?
Public may seem unsure until ‘law decides for them’
Yi Ho-rim, executive director of Marriage for All Korea, a leading local LGBTQ+ advocacy group, sees this moment as a reminder that legal change is not always a popularity contest. “The support for legalization has declined somewhat, but that doesn’t mean the conversation is stagnant,” Yi said.
“In fact, we see the current moment as a result of political polarization, not public apathy.”
Yi links the decline to the broader social climate. “Far-right mobilization earlier this year, combined with heightened political tension and increased online radicalization among young men, likely influenced the shift,” she noted. “When public discourse is overwhelmed by noise and fear, minority issues like same-sex marriage naturally become sidelined.”
Yi has argued that laws can reshape public perception. “In Taiwan, support for same-sex marriage was limited before legalization in 2019. But once the law passed, social attitudes evolved quickly. That pattern is not unique to Taiwan. We’ve seen similar changes in many countries.”
This pattern is not just anecdotal. Yi points to a notable case in South Korea’s own polling history. “There’s no way to prove causality,” she said, “but it’s hard to see it as a coincidence that Gallup Korea’s support numbers jumped by 10 percentage points between 2013 and 2014, exactly when countries like New Zealand, France and several US states made headlines by legalizing same-sex marriage.”
Park Dae-seung, a political philosopher at Seoul National University and director of the Institute for Inequality and Citizenship in Seoul, agrees. “Constitutional democracies are designed to protect minority rights, even when those rights are unpopular,” Park said.
“Laws that affirm dignity and equality are rarely embraced by a majority at first. But they send a powerful social signal. They tell people what is ‘normal’. In other words, it’s the law that decides for them what’s acceptable.”
“Korean politicians routinely cite ‘lack of public consensus’ as a reason to delay bills like the Life Partnership Act or Marriage Equality Act, both of which remain stalled in the National Assembly for years,” he added. “But it’s an excuse.”
While younger South Koreans have historically been more supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, the generational divide is showing unexpected shifts. The latest Gallup Korea poll revealed that support for same-sex marriage among people in their 20s dropped by 15 percentage points between 2023 and 2025. At the same time, support among those over 70 nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 19 percent.
Yi sees this as a sign that older generations are not immovable. “These are people who still get most of their information from legacy media. When the 2024 Supreme Court ruling recognized same-sex cohabiting partners as eligible for health insurance benefits, it was widely reported. That may have helped normalize the issue.”
Groups like the Coalition Against Homosexuality and Same-Sex Marriage, backed by conservative Christian organizations, have actively resisted even symbolic shifts. In October, the group filed a criminal complaint against government officials who authorized same-sex partner recognition in the 2025 census. They claimed it violated the law by creating “false public records” and warned of a wider moral collapse.
Yi has contended that public discomfort should not be used to delay basic rights. “Many of these objections rely on the idea that LGBTQ+ people do not value love, care or long-term commitment,” she said.
“But that is only because most people have never met a same-sex couple in their daily lives. We are still largely invisible, and the numbers show it. In the 2025 Hankook Research survey, people who personally know an LGBTQ+ person were nearly twice as likely to support same-sex marriage. Visibility alone makes a real difference.”
Liberty Counsel, the Christian hate group behind Kim Davis’s attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn its marriage equality decision, says their fight to end LGBTQ+ equality is far from over.
“I have no doubt that Davis’s resolve will serve as a catalyst to raise up many more challenges to the wrongly decided Obergefell opinion,” wrote Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver in a message on the group’s website. “Until then, we must pray, fight, and contend for when Obergefell is no longer the law of the land.”
The Supreme Court ruled in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that people have a fundamental right to choose who to marry, regardless of their spouse’s gender. The decision legalized marriage equality in all 50 states.
A county clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which led to a lawsuit and ten years of legal fights.
This year, with help from the lawyers at Liberty Counsel, she filed an appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn a judgment against her that required her to pay $360,000 to a gay couple whom she had illegally denied a marriage license. In that petition, she asked the Supreme Court to end marriage equality, arguing that her case proved that LGBTQ+ equality was inherently a threat to the rights of Christians like herself.
Last week, the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, leaving its decision in favor of marriage rights in place for at least another year.
Anti-LGBTQ+ activists, though, aren’t going to give up.
“This time, Kim Davis is the victim of religious animus and is being deprived of her constitutional freedom of religion,” Staver wrote. “Tomorrow, it could be you.”
“This may mark the end of an era in litigating Davis’s case, but the fight to overturn Obergefell and protect religious liberty has just begun.”
Staver’s argument is similar to an argument that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito made in 2020 that the mere existence of married same-sex couples is a violation of Christians’ religious freedom because seeing married same-sex couples encourages people to judge Christians “as bigots.” (That opinion was delivered in the context of a different appeal filed by Davis.)
“Since Obergefell, parties have continually attempted to label people of good will as bigots merely for refusing to alter their religious beliefs in the wake of prevailing orthodoxy,” Thomas wrote at the time.
The Supreme Court rejected a longshot effort Monday to overturn its ruling guaranteeing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis directly asked the justices to overrule the 2015 landmark decision after a jury awarded damages to a couple whom Davis refused to issue a marriage license.
“The Court can and should fix this mistake,” her attorneys wrote in court filings.
In a brief order, the justices declined to take up Davis’s appeal alongside dozens of other petitions up for consideration at the justices’ weekly closed-door conference. There were no noted dissents.
Court watchers viewed Davis’s appeal as a longshot effort, but it sparked trepidation among LGBTQ rights groups since several conservative justices who dissented in the decade-old case remain on the court.
Davis gained national attention after she raised religious objections to issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Among the refused couples was David Ermold and David Moore, who sued. Davis was found to have violated a judge’s order in another case, which required her to keep issuing licenses.
Davis was jailed for five days, the couple obtained their license and Kentucky later passed a law enabling clerks to keep their signatures off marriage certificates.
But Davis kept fighting in court after the couple won $100,000 in emotional distress damages from a jury plus $260,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Primarily, Davis’s appeal concerned arguments that she has a private First Amendment religious defense against the award, despite acting as a government official.
She tacked onto it a request to overturn Obergefell outright, insisting the whole lawsuit would fall if the justices do so.
When the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices meet behind closed doors on Friday, the justices will decide whether to hear an appeal from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, a name that became synonymous with anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes to marriage equality a decade ago.
Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after Obergefell v. Hodges made marriage equality the law of the land in 2015, has asked the court not only to overturn her financial settlement in a civil case loss in lower courts but also to reconsider the landmark ruling itself.
While Davis’s petition centers on whether she can be held personally liable for emotional-distress damages, her legal team is also urging the justices to revisit the constitutional right to marry. For those who remember the culture war that surrounded Davis’s defiance, the possibility that her name might again appear on the Supreme Court docket has reignited deep anxiety across the LGBTQ+ community
In separate interviews with The Advocate, Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff whose name now defines that right, and GLAD Law legal director Josh Rovenger described the moment as both surreal and revealing. One is the man who stood before the Court ten years ago and won the right to have his marriage recognized. The other works at the organization that helped secure that victory. Both see the Davis petition not just as a legal maneuver but as a test of whether the country can sustain a principle it once declared settled.
“A narrow case, shoehorning a broad agenda”
Rovenger explained what this case is and what it isn’t.
“This is a narrow case with a technical legal question,” he said, emphasizing that it concerns emotional-distress damages and qualified immunity, not marriage equality itself. “Attorneys who want to overturn Obergefell are trying to shoehorn that into a very narrow case.”
Davis, a former Rowan County clerk, was found liable for denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples in violation of clearly established law. A jury awarded damages to those couples, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision. Davis’s petition now asks the Supreme Court to review that ruling, Rovinger explained. While she has framed the case as one about her religious freedom, Rovenger said the issue before the Court remains technical.
“The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions a year,” he said. “It would really be anomalous for them to take a case with such a narrow fact pattern and use it to revisit Obergefell.”
Still, Rovenger acknowledged why people are uneasy.
“Given the rollback of rights we’ve seen in other areas, Dobbs being the most prominent, that fear makes sense,” he said. “But this case is not the vehicle for that kind of sweeping reversal.”
The limits of the Respect for Marriage Act
Part of the current confusion, Rovenger said, stems from uncertainty about how the Respect for Marriage Act interacts with the Obergefell decision. The 2022 law, signed by President Joe Biden, requires states and the federal government to recognize marriages performed in other states. However, it does not compel every state to issue marriage licenses if Obergefell were to be overturned.
“In a world where Obergefell didn’t exist,” he said, “a couple married in one state would still have their marriage recognized federally and by other states, but not necessarily be able to marry everywhere.”
He called that distinction significant, not only for its practical consequences but for what it would signal about equality itself.
“A patchwork approach across states,” he said, “is fundamentally different from a nationwide right.”
Rovenger also pointed to the Supreme Court’s own language on “reliance interests” — the idea that people build their lives on the stability of established rights. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, he noted, has recently said marriage equality has created such interests, making it less likely to be undone. Barrett had told the New York Times that Obergefell created “concrete reliance interests.”
“Those interests,” Rovinger said, “remain one of the critical factors the Court considers when deciding whether to revisit precedent.” According to Gallup, 68 percent of Americans support marriage equality.
Jim Obergefell: “Disgusted by this twisting of religious freedom”
For Jim Obergefell, the case is personal. He said he was “disgusted” that his fellow citizens would work against another group’s well-being and happiness, using religious liberty as an excuse.
“This modern version of religious freedom — this belief that one’s personal religion trumps everything else — is a twisting and perverting of what our founders intended,” he said.
Obergefell said Davis’s refusal to follow the law was emblematic of a broader problem: public officials placing private faith above civic duty.
“She swore an oath to serve all people,” he said. “And yet she used her government position to persecute others.”
His frustration extends to the justices themselves and their recent decisions, which have often ignored established understandings of the law. Justice Clarence Thomas recently said that past decisions “aren’t gospel.”
“Why should anyone feel secure about the right to marry,” he asked, “when this Court has proven it doesn’t believe in precedent?”
“One of those justices’ own marriage exists because of a Supreme Court decision,” Obergefell said, referring to Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 ruling that struck down bans on interracial marriage. Thomas is Black, and his wife, Ginny, is white. “If this Court overturns Obergefell, then what does that say about their own logic?” Obergefell added.
“People should be concerned”
Obergefell said that the LGBTQ+ community’s fear is warranted.
“Absolutely, people should be concerned. I’m concerned,” he said on Saturday. “Yesterday I officiated a wedding for a cousin who asked whether they should get married now instead of waiting. My answer was yes.”
He explained that even with the Respect for Marriage Act in place, states could still move swiftly to block new marriages if Obergefell were struck down.
“Ohio [where I live] still has a Defense of Marriage Act on the books,” he said. “If Obergefell is overturned, Ohio could immediately say, ‘no more marriage licenses for queer couples.’”
Obergefell warned that political forces aligned against LGBTQ+ rights have shown a willingness to manipulate electoral systems to maintain power.
“We have a political party that has turned its back on democracy,” he said. “They’re doing everything they can solely to remain in power — to punish and to be vindictive.”
A fragile majority, a durable principle
Despite deep pessimism about the Court, Obergefell said he still finds hope in younger generations.
“They don’t see difference the way older generations do,” he said. “There are millions of people out there who share my values, who believe in humanity, who believe every person deserves happiness and rights. That gives me hope.”
Rovenger echoed the sentiment, though his version is more procedural.
“We’re all watching closely,” he said. “We’ll keep an eye on whether the case gets relisted and on any separate statements that come out. But we’re not panicking. We’re prepared for all possibilities and ready to meet that moment if it comes.”
For now, the fate of Obergefell doesn’t hinge on oral arguments or public hearings but on what happens in a private conference room inside the marble halls of the Supreme Court. Whether the justices see the Davis case as a technical dispute or a cultural flashpoint will determine not only one woman’s liability but perhaps the trajectory of a right that has defined a generation.
If the Court declines to hear the case, the lower-court rulings stand, and marriage equality remains intact. If it grants review, the nation will enter another defining chapter in its legal history.
Either way, Obergefell’s warning lingers: “They’ve turned the idea of freedom on its head,” he said. “And unless we stand up for what it truly means, we risk losing more than marriage, and we risk losing the very promise of equality itself.”
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday gave judges in the state a pass if they don’t want to marry same-sex couples, unilaterally granting public officials the right to discriminate against queer couples.
In an end run around equal protection concerns, the high court amended the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct to read, “It is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief.”
The change follows years of litigation that inspired a lawsuit by a county judge in Texas asking federal courts to declare that Texas law does not and cannot punish him for his practice of officiating opposite-sex, but not same-sex, marriages in the state.
Jack County Judge Brian Umphress, who sued in 2020 because he only wanted to perform weddings for opposite-sex couples, argued that his conduct would run afoul of the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, despite protections he believed he enjoyed consistent with his religious freedom rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, Houston Public Media reports.
In response, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit put the lower federal-court proceedings on hold and asked the Texas Supreme Court to answer the question, “Does Canon 4A(1) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct prohibit judges from publicly refusing, for moral or religious reasons, to perform same-sex weddings while continuing to perform opposite-sex weddings?” That part of the code requires judges to refrain from behavior that would “cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge.”
The high court’s answer came with the amended code of conduct, bypassing public argument.
Judge Umphress’ fear of sanction for his discriminatory conduct was based on the case of McLennan County Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley in Waco, who spent years in court arguing she had a right to refuse to marry gay couples.
Hensley replied to requests from gay couples with a statement that read, “I’m sorry, but Judge Hensley has a sincerely held religious belief as a Christian, and will not be able to perform any same-sex weddings.”
That conduct earned a public warning from the Judicial Conduct Commission, which said Hensley was violating a requirement that justices of the peace be impartial, even in extrajudicial duties like officiating weddings.
Her refusal to treat LGBTQ+ people equally cast “doubt on her capacity to act impartially to persons appearing before her as a judge due to the person’s sexual orientation,” the commission wrote.
Hensley claimed that no one’s rights were denied since a same-sex couple could have found another judge to marry them, despite the fact that she was the only justice of the peace performing marriages in Waco at the time.
Hensley filed a lawsuit against the commission with help from the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based anti-LGBTQ+ legal organization, arguing for protections under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The commission eventually dismissed its sanction a few months after the Texas Supreme Court allowed Hensley’s case to proceed.
That decision from the Texas high court earned Hensley a supportive concurring opinion from the chief justice, who publicly supported the Waco judge before his appointment.
“Judge Hensley treated them respectfully,” Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote of the couples she refused to marry. “They got married nearby. They went about their lives. Judge Hensley went back to work, her Christian conscience clean, her knees bent only to her God. Sounds like a win-win.”
Jason Mazzone, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who’s familiar with both cases, said the Texas Supreme Court’s code of conduct workaround still leaves open the possibility for a gay couple with standing to challenge a judge’s decision not to marry them on constitutional equal protection grounds.
“One of the claims that I think will be made in response to litigation that is likely is that, ‘Well, there are other people who can perform the wedding ceremony, so you can’t insist that a particular judge do it,’” Mazzone said. “But that, of course, is not how equal protection works, and it’s not how we expect government officials to operate.”
Under newly announced policy changes, the Ministry of Data and Statistics will recognise same-sex couples living in the same household in the Population and Housing Census.
The government confirmed on Tuesday (21 October) it would allow same-gender housholds to pick “spouse” and “cohabiting partner” options on the census, which circulates every five years.
Previous iterations flagged the options as errors and rejected, according to Rainbow Action Korea – a coalition of 49 LGBTQ+ organisations.
“In past surveys, couples of the same gender could not select ‘spouse’ even if they lived together as such. The system would return an error,” They said in a statement reported by Straits Times.
“This is the first step towards having LGBTQ+ citizens fully reflected in national data.”
Same-sex marriage is not currently legal in South Korea. As of 2023, cohabiting couples can receive spousal coverage under the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS).
A 2024 ruling upholding same-sex couple’s rights to access health insurance benefits was heralded as a “significant step” towards LGBTQ+ equality, with many arguing it paves the way towards legalising same-sex marriage.
The centre-left Justice Party similarly commended the government’s decision to update the census, arguing it could lead to “further change.”
“The day will come when even transgender citizens are visible in national statistics,” a spokesperson continued.
LGBTQ+ rights progress remains slow in the East Asian country. LGBTQ+ people are banned from adoption and military service, while hate crime protections are non-existent.
While legally changing gender has been permitted without sterilisation since 2020, gender-affirming care remains heavily restricted.
An Ipsos survery found that, as of May 2025, 31 per cent of South Koreans are anti-LGBTQ+, while 51 per cent oppose same-sex public displays of affection.
Despite this, nearly a quarter believe the country is a “good place” for LGBTQ+ people.
Rainbow Action argued that, while the move was a positive step, the government hadn’t done enough to inform the public about the change which could limit participation.
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