As state after state makes same-sex marriage legal, it’s easy to be placated by the notion that we’re nearing true equality. For heterosexual cisgender people, marriage equality has become a self-congratulatory rallying point, a string of victories we point at to prove that things can, in fact, get better. We love the wedding pictures and the joy of excited couples together for decades who are finally able to get married.

But let’s not make it rain celebratory rice just yet. Marriage equality is far from the only indicator of how well we’re doing in tackling LGBT issues, and, despite some policy hurdles we’ve surmounted, homophobia in all its forms remains a pervasive force in LGBT people’s daily lives – even in so-called progressive enclaves.

Last year a lesbian couple said they were kicked out of a cab in Oregon by a bigoted driver (the same thing happened to a Chicago couple in 2013 and a London couple on New Years Eve) In 2014, a gay couple was beaten up by a homophobic mob in Philadelphia, and a gay man was badly injured in an attack on a subway platform in the middle of New York’s Greenwich Village the same year. Trans people - trans women, in particular - are attacked and murdered with alarming regularity, yet their deaths rarely make national news.

Despite headway on policies ranging from non-discrimination to same-sex marriage, legislative successes do not always translate into tangible changes in LGBT people’s daily lives. Marriage equality may have persevered in Alabama, for example - but the win was in name only, thanks to a court order instructing probate judges not to give out licenses to same-sex couples.

In a move that the Human Rights Campaign called “a pathetic, last-ditch attempt at judicial fiat” by a man with a personal agenda, KKK-approved Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S Moore sent out a letter to halt same-sex marriages, citing the state constitution’s “Sanctity of Marriage Amendment”, which says marriage is only between a man and a woman. Judges across the state are following his order and denying couples marriage licenses.

As my colleague Steven Thrasher wrote, marriage equality in states like Alabama is “only a step forward in a fight for equality which may go on for years or decades to come”.

The right to marry is just one small piece of a much broader fight against the structural and social systems that reenforce inequality. And as much as we’d like to think this country has changed, we still have a long road ahead of us to make LGBT equality a reality. Just this month, for example, a poll found that while Americans support marriage equality, a majority also support a wedding business’ right to refuse services to same-sex couples.



The idea that our work ending this hatred is nearing an end is a seductive one, but it’s a lie. If we care about ending all forms of discrimination and hatred against LGBT people, we’ll support those fighting not just for marriage, but also for better access to health care, food security, affordable housing and immigrants’ rights. Sharing pictures of happy newlywed gay couples on the internet is nice, but not nearly enough.