Where Is Marriage Equality in WorldPride DC?

Ten Years After Obergefell, Why the LGBTQ Movement Has Gone Silent?

Image: The Capital Pride Parade and The Falls Church Epsicopal marches down 14th Street, NW on June 8, 2024, via WTOP.

Ten years ago this June, five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that changed my life—and, quite literally, yours. Obergefell v. Hodges was more than a legal victory. It was a cultural milestone, a moral reckoning, and a moment of profound national reconciliation. We asked the country to see our love as no less worthy of dignity than anyone else’s—and they said yes.

We promised, in return, not to redefine marriage but to honor it. We claimed its burdens as well as its benefits. We insisted that we were not seeking license, but discipline. That marriage made us better, not freer. That was the moral heart of the case—and of the movement.

So let me ask something uncomfortable: Where is that story at WorldPride DC 2025?

This is the biggest LGBTQ+ event in the world this year. It is being hosted in the nation's capital. It coincides exactly with the tenth anniversary of marriage equality in America. This enormous, month-long event starts tomorrow. And yet, as of today, not a single panel, exhibit, or formal celebration appears dedicated to that victory. A small sample of the countless panels and parties include:

• DC Latinx Pride

• API (Asian-Pacific Islander) Pride

• Trans Pride

• AIDS Memorial Quilt

• DC Silver Pride

• DC Blak Pride

• Pride in Science - celebrating queer scientists

• We Are Abundant: A Queer Vision of Economic Justice

• Our Stories, Our Truth: LGBTQ+ Veterans’ Stories of Joy and Resistance

• World Pride Shabbat Service and Dinner

• Andy Warhol in Iran

• Solutions in the Face of Fear: Transformative Housing Solutions for Black Trans Women

• Eid al-Adha for All: An Inclusive Celebration for Queer Muslims & Allies

• Korean Queer & Trans WorldPride Workshop

How did we forget something so central? Did we simply overlook it—one too many emails, one too few volunteers, (one too many corporate sponsorships, perhaps)? Or have we chosen not to look back, precisely because the promises we made feel, now, inconvenient?

We don’t talk about marriage equality anymore—not because it no longer matters, but because it reminds us of who we said we’d be. It’s easier to celebrate the symbolic win than to wrestle with what it required of us. Because if we stop and remember what Obergefell actually meant—what we said it meant—we are confronted with what we’ve since abandoned: the institution and what it expects from those who enter it, the quiet heroism of monogamy.

In its place? A cultural retreat from those very ideals. We wear marriage like a medal, but rarely defend the institution. We invoke equality, but flinch at the obligations that make it real. We won the right to join one of civilization’s most demanding institutions—and then grew afraid to speak its language.

That’s what makes the silence at WorldPride DC so jarring. This was our moment to honor not only a civil rights victory, but an important recognition of our shared humanity. Not just for nostalgia’s sake, but because the institution of marriage still holds the potential to rescue us from the very crises we now face—loneliness, atomization, the erosion of trust. Pride is many things, but surely it must include the pride we take in the promises we’ve made—to each other, and to society.

If Obergefell is absent from WorldPride, it’s not because it doesn’t belong—it’s because it belongs too much. It demands to be remembered not as a rainbow-colored abstraction, but as a moral milestone. A reminder that gay pride once meant pride in the promises we made, the relationships we built, and the love we were willing to honor.

This June, I’ll be marking that anniversary in my own way. And I invite you to do the same. Because marriage wasn’t just something we fought for. It was something we meant—and still do.

—Bryan
Marriage After Equality