These LGBTQ couples have a way to curb Trump anxiety: Put a ring on it

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

(CNN) — The results of the 2024 election left some LGBTQ couples with a particularly gripping worry.

Scarred by the many ways President Donald Trump’s first administration rolled back LGBTQ rights, and alarmed by recent court opinions from conservative Supreme Court justices, they feared that the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, could be overturned in the next four years, either by the court or by Trump himself.

That’s why Amber Lamoreaux of North Carolina, a licensed wedding officiant, posted on Facebook offering her services for free to any LGBTQ couples hoping to seal the deal before the start of Trump’s presidency.

She thought two, maybe three, friends might reach out. Instead, she received dozens of messages from couples all over the Southeast, mostly strangers, asking for her help. Two months later, Lamoreaux said she has officiated more than 70 weddings for LGBTQ couples — once conducting six ceremonies in the same day.

Across the country, some LGBTQ couples are heading to the altar before Inauguration Day, and people are stepping up to help. In Chicago, officiant Carla Doshi is planning a mass wedding for couples — complete with a photographer and a champagne toast — the weekend before Inauguration day.

Similar events have occurred or been planned in Minneapolis, Atlanta and Pennsylvania; meanwhile, some wedding vendors have created sign-up sheets and other amenities to offer their services pro-bono. Officiants like Lamoreaux, chaplains and other religious leaders have also reported upticks in LGBTQ couples trying to marry.

“It also made me realize that the community I am a part of is bigger than what I thought it was,” Lamoreaux said.

For some, getting married is the practical choice

Eight years ago, E.R. Anderson was at home watching the lead up to the inauguration when a friend gave him a call.

“My partner and I want to get married before … Trump is sworn in, just in case,” Anderson recalls the friend saying. “We feel superstitious about it. Can you marry us?”

His answer was a quick yes. He put on pants and rushed to Atlanta’s Charis Books and More, a feminist bookstore often viewed as a secular church for southern LGBTQ people, for the ceremony. On his way in, he got a similar request from another lesbian couple.

That day, as Trump was sworn in for his first term as president hundreds of miles away, two LGBTQ couples celebrated cementing their love forever. This year, Anderson — the executive director of Charis Circle, the nonprofit programming arm of the bookstore — decided to do the same thing, hosting a mass wedding scheduled for the day before the inauguration.

“This is an easy thing that we can do to help folks feel a little bit more agency in their lives,” Anderson said. “And also give us something fun to focus on in an otherwise kind of scary weekend.”

While this year’s wedding event is drop-in, seven couples — some of whom Anderson said have been together for “many, many years” — have already committed. Some of them may not have even had plans to get married in the near future, he said. Instead, there’s a hope that having the official documentation of a marriage certificate might serve as some protection against whatever the future may hold.

“A lot of these are long-term couples,” Anderson said. “And they’re like, ‘Well, I would rather be sure that we can remain a family, that we can see each other in the hospital, that if one of us dies we can be guaranteed that we’ll be able to stay in this house.’”

LGBTQ couples aren’t the only ones grappling with these dilemmas. Couples with mixed immigration statuses have also decided to wed ahead of Inauguration Day, while some transgender people have rushed to officially change their gender on documents like birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and so on, out of fear that the incoming Trump administration won’t recognize their gender identity without it.

“I think a lot of us are hedging our bets, and being like, well, it’s probably better to have papers than not have papers,” Anderson said. “This is really a pragmatic choice for a lot of people at this moment.”

While some analysts feel that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could threaten marriage equality, the court doesn’t act without a case, said Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, and currently none exist asking for Obergefell to be reversed. Even if such a case were to materialize, the votes aren’t guaranteed, Pizer said, noting that the politics surrounding the overturning of Roe v. Wade differ from marriage equality.

Yet in reasoning his support for overturning Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court has “a duty to ‘correct the error’” of Obergefell. As recently as last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asserted that the conservative majority of the court is threatening marriage rights.

But even if Obergefell were overturned, the bipartisan-backed Respect for Marriage Act requires the federal government to respect valid marriage licenses of same-sex couples. Voiding marriage licenses would be illegal, and many states have also legalized same-sex marriage. Even if couples had to travel to wed, their home state would still have to recognize their union.

“The bottom line is that neither overturning Obergefell nor repealing the Respect for Marriage Act appears to be high on the priorities list of the incoming Trump administration,” Pizer said. “A likely contributing factor is that marriage equality has super-majoritarian support in public opinion polls for years now. That support was evident when voters this past November handily removed their anti-marriage state constitutional amendments in California, Colorado, and Hawaii.”

Amidst the fear, there’s hope

Still, many LGBTQ couples who hope to marry are nervous.

When Mikala Beaver’s now husband, who is transgender, first proposed last year, the couple imagined a huge wedding with family, friends and all the bells and whistles. The election, she said, changed things.

Even before results were in, the couple started planning their nuptials. Like many people, they wanted to preemptively get their documentation in order. Still — even as legal analysts assure that existing unions and unions made in states allowing same-sex marriage would both still be legal — Beaver worries the certificate may not be enough.

“The thought was in my mind, even though we have the documentation (Trump) can still come in office and say none of that is even legal,” Beaver said. “Your documentation means nothing.”

In chats with couples ahead of their weddings, Lamoreaux said all of them were frightened. One couple couldn’t stop crying, she said: They had fully planned and paid for a wedding in 2025, but decided to scrap their plans in order to wed before Inauguration Day.

“They were just so scared that they were willing to put everything on the line and lose all their money … to go ahead and do it now,” she said.

The fact that so many couples are alarmed is “unsurprising,” Pizer said. Anti-transgender political ads, along with anti-LGBTQ policies pursued by Trump in his first term, have created a hostile environment for LGBTQ people. Assuming marriage equality remains, Pizer anticipates other forms of aggression, like censorship and restrictive rules around gender and sexuality.

“Given the Trump 1.0 policies, the recent campaign rhetoric, and Project 2025, trepidation is the only rational mindset for members of our community,” she said.

As Trump’s inauguration creeps closer, Lamoreaux said she’s still receiving messages from people hoping to get hitched. Her work isn’t done yet, she said, and she doesn’t think it will be any time soon.

There are silver linings. Just like people came together to share Lamoreaux’s Facebook post back in November — and others who have also offered officiating and other wedding services free of charge — Anderson hopes that the fear some people are feeling will “motivate us to build the kind of communities that we want to experience.” One where people want to help each other, he said, and provide for others in the ways they can.

Meanwhile, the Beavers were married in December, less than a year after getting engaged, at a park in North Carolina. Despite the circumstances, the only thing they’d change was the weather, Beaver said — it was too cold for her off-the-shoulder wedding dress, but they did it anyway. The whole day, she didn’t once think of Trump or what the future could hold. All that mattered, she said, was marrying her person.

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