'This Is Just a Start': At Pride, Post-Roe Threat to Marriage Equality Casts a Shadow

The sun shone down on Market and Noe streets on Saturday, cleared of cars and filled with smiling people. Vendors sold paintings of an idealized Castro neighborhood to passers-by. A drag queen in a yellow jumpsuit sashayed on a stage sporting signage behind her that read "FAMILY PRIDE" — this was San Francisco's first annual Family Pride block party. Parents held children on their shoulders and swayed to the beat.

Husbands Maple Chen and Collin Anthony Chen pushed their stroller through it all. But as their 6-month-old son Henry goggled, wide-eyed but calm, at the sights of his very first Pride weekend, a familiar worry were on his fathers' minds.

If the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade curtailing abortion rights across the country weren't weighty enough, a warning came written in the opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas, a stray few lines amid the 213-page decision that could change the course of the country, and their family's life.

A court ruling on same-sex marriages could be reconsidered by the court next, Justice Thomas wrote.

"When I was a teenager, I never thought having kids would be possible, that our relationships would ever be recognized legally," Collin Anthony Chen told KQED. "So then when I finally was able to have Henry and, of course, Maple as well, the relationship, I just couldn't believe it. I was just in shock. I was in awe."

He's anxious now, he said: "If we're going back to the decisions that have been made by the Supreme Court, all of that is now in jeopardy."

That's especially worrisome, Maple Chen said, "if we're thinking about our next kid."

Their family wasn't alone in their concern. Wives Luisa Hurtado and Nicole Brown also were at the Family Pride block party. They worried how losing same-sex marriage rights would affect their co-owned business, and their hope to adopt a child from Colombia, where Hurtado hails from.

"We want to adopt and kind of have kids that are also part of my culture," Hurtado said. They thought there had been enough progress in both countries to make that dream a reality.

Even worse, Brown felt Thomas' warning spurred unanswered questions that could lead to diminished lives. "What if we can't be gay at work? What if we need to shield ourselves, and be a fraction of who we are?" she said.

Across the bay, Lake Merritt played host to Oakland Black Pride. James Cox, advocacy director for the eponymous organization that sponsors the event, said despite the Pride weekend celebrations, the recent Supreme Court decision was top of everybody's mind.

“This is just a start, taking away women’s rights. Next it’s going to be taking away LGBTQ rights, trans rights, the rights of interracial couples. Like, how far are they going to go with this?" they asked.

In Friday's decision, Justice Thomas cited three past rulings to revisit, centering on contraception, sodomy and same-sex marriage. Melissa Murray, an NYU legal scholar with expertise in constitutional law, told NPR that Thomas essentially pointed the way toward other laws the public could push for reconsideration.

"In doing so, he's essentially inviting future challenges to rights of same-sex marriage, rights of contraception, rights of parents to raise their children in the manner of their choosing," Murray said. "All of those rights are underlaid by the same grant of liberty that Roe was underlaid by, and that has been found to be insufficient to root this in constitutional protection."

And while Thomas' fellow conservative justices explicitly wrote that their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade should not, and would not, affect those other decisions, the liberal justices plainly disagreed in their dissenting opinion.

"No one should be confident that this majority is done
with its work," wrote justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer. "The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation."

Those rights, the justices wrote, "are all part of the same constitutional fabric."

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — the self-proclaimed "Ayatollah of the Assembly," a political star-maker and long-respected political watcher — made a similar analysis to KQED on Sunday.

"They're full of shit," said Brown in regard to the statements by conservative justices assuring people that the Dobbs decision would not affect same-sex marriage. (His opinion was phrased in what was perhaps a more pointed fashion than that of the liberal Supreme Court justices.)

When asked whether he thought Justice Thomas is alone on the court in his opinion, Brown replied, "Not at all. Of course he isn't alone."

Brown spoke from just outside an annual Pride breakfast hosted by the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, an annual feast before the parade where LGBTQ+ advocates and politicians hobnob. The club's San Franciscan namesake, writer Alice B. Toklas, lived with writer Gertrude Stein in Paris for years as they hosted art salons together; theirs has been described as "one of the best gay love stories of the 20th century."

Toklas died in Paris at the age of 89. But even in her New York Times obituary, which was written in 1967, she was described merely as Stein's "longtime friend."

Sunday morning, inside the walls of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Hotel, politicians warned attendees of the Toklas Pride breakfast that conservatives threaten to take the country back to such an era.

"These laws that they're passing are creating absolute terror for members of our community across this country," said State Sen. Scott Wiener, specifically naming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose now-infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill restricts schools from discussing everyday gay life. It's also inspired copycat bills throughout the country.

"These laws are not just bad. We all deal with bad laws that get passed," Wiener told the crowd. "These are laws that literally question whether our community has a right to exist, whether we have a right to exist."

Wiener, who is openly gay, has received multiple death threats, including a recent bomb threat that was deemed credible enough to send a bomb squad to his home. He noted that it wasn't that long ago that people with hate in their hearts would drive long distances to beat gay men in the Castro.

"We're used to violence, unfortunately, in this community. We also know how to fight back," Wiener said. "Clarence Thomas did us a favor by saying the quiet part out loud, that Roe is just the beginning. They want to reinstate anti-sodomy laws. They want to end marriage equality. They want to end contraception."

"So guess what? We're not going back" to those times, Wiener said. "Not ever. That means we should be pissed off and should anger-tweet, but that's not enough. We have to win elections."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also at the Pride breakfast, offered another solution: putting Republicans on the record about their positions, in Congress.

"So what we plan to do is put all these things back on the agenda so we can put them on the record. Enshrining Roe v. Wade as law of the land. Passing the Equality Act," Pelosi said, referring to a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

But outside the breakfast, late in the morning as the crowds for the Pride parade began to form on Market Street, Brown sounded a more clear-eyed warning.

"We went to sleep a long time ago as Democrats. We had no vision of what tomorrow could be like. And as we achieved all the things we achieved, redefining, etcetera, we didn't understand we needed to protect them," he said, referring to abortion rights and rights for LGBTQ+ communities. "The Republicans knew exactly how to ultimately get rid of them, and they did what they needed to do at every level. They started with justices of the peace and [went] all the way up to the Supreme Court. That's the way it is."

Standing just before the Hyatt's wide, revolving doors, Brown and this reporter could see Pride revelers beginning to gather outside. Brown gave his view plainly: Democrats have failed. And with those failures come very real consequences not only for people who can become pregnant but, soon, possibly everyone who was celebrating under the colorful Pride banners fluttering just outside.

KQED's Daphne Young contributed to this report. NPR's Michael Martin also contributed to this report.