WASHINGTON (BP) — More than 425,000 same-sex couples had already wed in the U.S. when the Supreme Court approved such unions in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges decision June 26, 2015.

Ten years later, the number of gay marriages has risen by at least 55%, reaching 774,553 in 2023, based on U.S. Census Bureau data as reported by Pew Research Center.

The number of households headed by same-sex cohabiting couples has also risen over this period. It started at 433,539 in 2015 and increased to 536,894 by 2023, Pew wrote in its same analysis drawn from census data.

Combined, more than 1.31 million households were led by gay couples in the U.S. as recently as 2023. Many cohabitating couples can nonetheless claim common-law marriage, according to FindLaw.com, depending on where they reside, as Obergefell includes that right in the 16 states where common-law marriages are recognized.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) continues to uphold a biblical view of marriage amid a cultural shift, passing a resolution at its 2025 annual meeting “On Restoring Moral Clarity through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family.”

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), said Obergefell did more than alter legal definitions, but “cemented a cultural rejection of God’s design for marriage.”

“The ripple effects of Obergefell have reached the church. Many congregations now face mounting pressure to compromise biblical truth or fall silent. But we must not retreat,” Leatherwood told Baptist Press upon the ruling’s 10th anniversary. “Instead, we must speak to consciences, with the objective of helping shape the culture back towards a biblical understanding of marriage.

“That means being a faithful witness — teaching God’s Word, strengthening families, and showing that His design still leads to wholeness and hope.”

While Obergefell magnified what Leatherwood described as the culture’s “deep confusion about gender, marriage and sexuality,” he said “our resolution stands as a call to clarity and resilience.

“It should bolster our confidence in the truth of Scripture and should help lawmakers understand God’s design for marriage should be both respected and reflected in the law.”

Perhaps the strongest language in the 2025 SBC resolution calls for Obergefell v. Hodges to be overturned, and affirms a “duty of lawmakers to pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law  — about marriage, sex, human life and family — and to oppose any law that denies or undermines what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade returned jurisdiction to the states, centering the battle for life on state ballot initiatives and legislative and Congressional action. Thirteen states offer the strongest protections for life, nine states enshrine abortion rights into their constitutions, and other states have varying degrees of abortion rights and limitations.

Comparatively when the Obergefell decision was issued, gay marriage was legal in 37 states and Washington D.C., in some cases by the state’s own doing and in other instances by the forced action of courts. As such, as recently as 2022, unenforceable constitutional amendments or state statutes prohibiting same-sex marriage remained on the books in 34 states, according to the Congressional Research Service.

A few states have urged the Supreme Court to review Obergefell, launched by a resolution the Idaho Legislature passed in January. Such a review would require a court case that makes it to the court on appeal, yet any refusal to marry a gay couple who meet all other requirements for marriage would be blatantly illegal.

Since Obergefell, the U.S. Congress passed the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act, signed by President Biden in December 2022. The act overturned the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, requires states to recognize gay marriages solemnized in other states, codifies the recognition of gay marriage by the federal government and limits the definition of marriage to unions of two individuals, but does not itself require states to perform gay marriages.

The act also includes religious freedom protections consistent with the First Amendment, stipulating that churches and other religious institutions, as well as their employees, “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage.”

While Obergefell hinged on a narrow 5-4 ruling, it followed a quick succession of gay marriage successes — either by court edicts or state legislation — across the U.S. Three of the dissenting justices in Obergefell still sit on the court, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Justice Antonin Scalia served until his death in 2016.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, now retired, said marriage “has not stood in isolation from developments in law and society” but “has evolved over time.”

“The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry,” he wrote in the opinion that drew on the Fourteenth Amendment. “No longer may this liberty be denied to them.”

Roberts’ dissent, joined by Thomas and Alito, said the majority opinion relied more on policy arguments than the Constitution.

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment,” Roberts wrote. “The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent.

“The majority expressly disclaims judicial ‘caution’ and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own ‘new insight’ into the ‘nature of injustice.’”

The majority opinion invalidated the intended laws of more than half the states and ordered the transformation of social institutions that had withstood millennia for a diversity of cultures, Roberts said, including the Kalahari Bushmen, the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs.

“Just who do we think we are?” he posed.

Despite all Obergefell has wrought, the Bible is still true, Leatherwood emphasizes.

“Southern Baptists affirm that marriage is not a human invention but a divine covenant between one man and one woman, revealed in Scripture,” Leatherwood said. “It is sacred, created for human flourishing and God’s glory. That does not change, regardless of laws or court decisions.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.)