How the Supreme Court’s LGBT Cases Fractured the First Amendment
In 1958, the US Supreme Court issued its first ruling involving the rights of what would later be known as the LGBTQ+ community. The US postmaster general had seized copies of One Magazine, one of the nation’s first gay publications, claiming it was “obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy” simply for discussing homosexuality. The trial court agreed with him, as did the federal court of appeals. Without oral argument, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the First Amendment protected gay speech. The decision had lasting consequences—it allowed LGBTQ+ people to create publications, spaces, institutions—and ultimately, to thrive as a community. This community built a movement that made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1996, the Supreme Court struck down a provision in the Colorado state constitution that targeted gay people. In 2003, it invalidated laws that criminalized intimate same-sex sexual conduct. In 2015, it vindicated marriage equality. And in 2020, it held that LGBTQ+ people are protected from employment discrimination nationwide. Yet, stalking each of these decisions were a series of less-prominent cases engineered by anti-LGBTQ+ advocates, who used the First Amendment to hollow out LGBTQ+ victories.