They Are Changing the Rules to Erase Us
Texas Gerrymandering. My marriage. The same fight for the soul of democracy.
10 years ago, my husband (then fiancé) and I stood inside the great city clerk’s office in New York City and said our vows. We left that moment believing we could build a future in a country that finally recognized our love. We continued on over the years and built our lives on that promise. We imagined a time soon enough when children would grow up never knowing a time when their parents’ marriage was questioned by the law. Fast forward a decade, under the second Trump administration, we are now forced to consider every legal document, every state line, every step we might need to take in order to protect ourselves if that promise is broken. That is not the life we were told we could have. That is not the America we were told we belonged to.
This week, anti-LGBTQ groups formally asked the Supreme Court to overturn the marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges. The Court has not yet agreed to hear the case. That is exactly why the danger is greatest now. When those who want to strip away your rights are knocking on the Court’s door, the most dangerous mistake is to assume the Justices will not open it.
On the other side of the country, another fight is building. CA Governor Gavin Newsom has announced a November ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts in a way that protects representation for millions of voters. It is a direct counterattack against the Republican gerrymandering machine that has been carving up maps in Texas (and other states) to lock in power for a shrinking minority that is hemorrhaging support in poll after poll.
At first, these two battles may seem separate. They are not. They are different fronts in the same war.
The authoritarian right has a single strategy. Change the rules until they cannot lose. In the states they control, they twist voting maps until your vote counts for less than theirs. In the courts they influence, they target rights that the public has already won and still supports. If they succeed, they will control who represents you and decide which freedoms you get to keep; like who you get to love.
We have seen this before. After the Civil War, newly freed Black Americans voted, held office, and began dismantling white supremacy through the law. The backlash came quickly. Rights were stripped. Districts were rewritten. Jim Crow was born. Democracy shrank until only a favored few were allowed inside. The blueprint is running again today, with different targets but the same outcome in mind.
Do not be fooled by their language. Gerrymandering is never about fairness. It is about locking in minority rule. Attacks on marriage equality are never about states’ rights or religious freedom. They are about giving hostile governments the power to erase the humanity of their neighbors, simply because of who they happen to love. The radicalized right wing Republican Party wraps cruelty in legal arguments because the naked truth would never win them a majority.
My marriage should not depend on which state I live in or which political party holds the Court. Your voice in Congress should not depend on how cleverly someone can draw a line on a map. These are not niche fights. They decide whether all of us count and all of us belong.
California’s ballot measure is a chance to show the country what happens when a state refuses to surrender to map-riggers. The marriage equality petition is a warning flare that rights are only safe when we defend them every time they are threatened, not just after they are lost.
The time to fight is before the ink dries, before the maps are final, before the gavel falls. We cannot choose only the battles that feel most urgent in the moment. We must defend the whole field or watch it disappear piece by piece.
In November, Californians must flood the polls to defend fair representation. Starting now, every American must demand that Congress enshrine marriage equality in law before the Court has the chance to erase it. The stakes are not abstract. They are measured in who sits in office and who gets to love openly without fear.
They are changing the rules to erase us. We still have the power to stop them. But only if we act before the door slams shut.