Experts sound the alarm: Evangelical's lawsuit could fuel future attacks on LGBTQ+ people

Kim Davis, the far-right Christian fundamentalist and former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has a game plan for attacking the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges ruling of 2015.

In a lawsuit filed on Davis' behalf, the Christian nationalist Liberty Counsel uses the High Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling of 2022 to argue that Obergefell should be overturned as well. Obergefell legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in much the same way that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.

In an article published on July 29, Salon's Marina Villeneuve reports, "A broad swath of legal experts told Salon that they doubt that former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis' longshot strategy to get the Supreme Court to overturn its pivotal 2015 same-sex marriage ruling will work in one fell swoop — but they say Davis' argument could fuel future attacks on LGBTQ+ rights down the road."

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Mary Ann Case, a University of Chicago law professor, notes that the Roberts Court hasn't been shy about overturning precedents.

Case told Salon, "Nothing is safe from the attack of the conservative majority on this Court. They can cut precedents down at will. And that means it's hard to know what the law is and will be."

Attorney Robbie Kaplan told Salon that overturning Obergefell "would be shocking, even for this Supreme Court."

University of Louisville law professor Samuel Marcosson is confident that "there's virtually no chance, bordering on zero" that the High Court will use the Liberty Counsel/Davis lawsuit "as the vehicle to reconsider Obergefell."

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But Jim Obergefell, the Obergefell in Obergefell v. Hodges, noted that the Religious Right is obsessive in its anti-gay views.

Obergefell told Salon, "This obsession that the Right has on queer people — why is this such a focus? It feels like their every thought, they wake up, and all they're thinking about queer people, what they do in their home, their families, what rights they have or don't have. What is the obsession? And what happened to the golden rule, treat others the way you'd like to be treated?"

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Read Salon's full article at this link.