Marriage Equality Icon Jim Obergefell Reacts to Leaked Supreme Court Opinion with Worry for Marriage Equality

Marriage equality advocate and candidate for the Ohio state legislature Jim Obergefell has spoken out about the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that calls women's reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ+ rights into question, Cleveland.com reported.

Obergefell, who was the lead plaintiff in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that led to the Court's 2015 ruling that made marriage equality legal in every state of the union, took to Twitter to express his alarm that "Our most basic human rights are under siege" by the Court, which currently has a conservative majority, queer perspective pop culture/news site "them" detailed.

Addressing the opinion's main focus – federally legal access to abortion procedures – Obergefell wrote: "Family planning decisions are central to personal dignity and autonomy, and any decision that takes that decision away from the person/family impacted is wrong."

Following up with a second tweet, Obergefell then addressed – as Alito did in the draft of the Court's opinion – the separate issue of equal marriage rights.

"I'm also concerned that members of this extreme court are eager to turn their attention to overturning marriage equality," Obergefell posted.

As previosuly reported, Alito's opinion, in its current draft form, overturns the Court's own 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal in America. Alito argued that abortion rights do not have "deep roots" in American culture and jurisprudence, despite the Court's ruling having been made half a century ago.

Alito also expresses doubt in the draft opinion about the legal muster of a person's right to bodily autonomy, linking Obergefell v. Hodges – along with another gay rights case, Lawrence v. Texas (in which the Court, in 2003, decriminalized same-gender consensual sex between adults) – to the 1973 abortion ruling via "the concept of autonomy and the right to privacy, which were established in Roe," them noted.

Alito slammed those rulings for their "attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one's 'concept of existence'" before adding: "None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history."

Obergefell expanded on his response to the leaked draft opinion in a statement, calling out the court's five conservative justices as not being representative of the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Envisioning a subsequent case in which the Court could use the same arguments to revoke marriage equality from gay and lesbian American families, Obergefell said, "The sad part is in both these cases, five or six people will determine the law of the land and go against the vast majority of Ohioans and Americans who overwhelmingly support a woman's right to make her own health decisions and a couple's right to be married."

"This is a sad day," Obergefell added, "but it's not over. We have fought the good fight for too long to be denied our rights now."

Obergefell, them recalled, became a lead plaintiff in Obergefell v. Hodges after he "had to travel to Maryland with his dying husband in order to be legally married, and even then, their marriage was not recognized in Ohio."

"The plaintiffs successfully argued that depriving same-sex couples of the right to marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause under the 14th Amendment; the rest is quite literally history," them added.

Alito, by contrast, resorted in the leaked draft of the Court's opinion to a common talking point among the anti-LGBTQ+ right, comparing legal parity in marriage and sexual intimacy with a scenario in which he imagined the judiciary "establishing fundamental rights to sex work and drug usage."