1. We've Had 365 Days of Marriage Equality

by Dave Holmes

A lot can happen in a year.

On June 26, 2014—one year before the Obergefell v. Hodges decision—marriage was an option for same-sex couples in 20 states. Twenty-eight states had constitutional amendments banning marriage equality. If you were married in Massachusetts and you had to move to Michigan, by the time you got there, you'd be roommates. In some states, the rules changed from county to county; you could be next of kin on one corner and strangers when you crossed the street.

On June 26, 2015, we turned on the news at 10:00 a.m. at to see interns spilling out of the courthouse—sprinting like Tom Cruise in every Tom Cruise movie—to deliver the Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling to waiting reporters.

We won.


Marriage equality was the law of the land. All of it. We felt relief. Joy. And a feeling whose name gets thrown around a lot in LGBT circles: pride.

If same-sex marriage was a thing that seemed inevitable, it also seemed unreachable, at least in our lifetimes. We knew we'd have a state here and a state there, a patchwork of different rights and titles across the country. But full, coast-to-coast marriage equality? In a country whose last president supported a constitutional amendment to ban it? Preposterous.

We won. The celebration lasted all weekend, and then some. The White House was lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag. Brands—beers, breakfast cereals, the late Colonel Sanders—seemed determined to outgay one another. In the real world, people voiced their support for the decision, without the "…but I'm not gay myself" disclaimer I was so used to hearing; if the jubilation made a straight person appear gay to a passing stranger, who could possibly care? We were equal.

We won, and we were one.

Evan Vucci

I remember taking a moment to savor the victory, to think about the generations of American kids who would grow up reading about same-sex marriage bans the way mine did about Jim Crow. I thought about the gay kids in that generation who would have the chance to grow up feeling fully equal. I thought about all of us who'd been fighting this fight on the streets and in courthouses and at Thanksgiving dinner tables for decades, and our younger counterparts—being born that very day—who wouldn't believe we ever had to.

And then, because it was June 2015, I got back to work and wrote another post about Donald Trump's latest gaffe and how it surely signaled the end of his campaign.

A lot can happen in a year.


Two weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of the ruling, we watched the horrific news come in from Orlando. A mentally unstable person—or a terrorist, or a possibly closeted gay man, or maybe all three of those things—got his hands on a semi-automatic rifle and a Glock, and he slaughtered dozens of LGBT people. Hours later, Los Angeles police stopped a man in a car stocked with explosive chemicals and weapons, on his way to the Los Angeles Pride Festival. In one brutal morning, the security and stability we were starting to feel were torn away.

What we began to suspect in the last year became absolutely clear: The fight for our freedom is just beginning.

After Obergefell, we got to work—setting dates for weddings that were decades overdue or coming up with new excuses for why we didn't plan to get married ourselves or—and we ask your forgiveness here—filming the flash-mob surprise-proposal videos we'd then post on YouTube. We had a lot of catching up to do.


So did the people who oppose us, not all of whom carry assault rifles. They clocked in, and they worked overtime. Claiming, as then-viable GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee did, that Obergefell would effectively make Christianity illegal. Saying with conviction that the most essential element of freedom is that cakes only be made for people whose private behavior aligns with the baker's religious beliefs. Invoking the specter of cross-dressing pedophiles to strip cities of their LGBT anti-discrimination laws.

Religious-freedom proposals are creeping their way across the country, state by state, a photo negative of the slow progress marriage equality made in the last 15 years. Our safe spaces, our bars and dance clubs and parades, feel at least for the moment like risky places to be. Whether this is a death spasm or the beginning of a longer, larger struggle, this much is clear: We have a fight on our hands.

So where are we now, one year later? After a year that gave us marriage equality and the worst mass shooting in modern American history? New freedoms for LGBT families and dozens of potential new state bills to roll them back? Barack Obama on the cover of Out and three GOP presidential hopefuls speaking at a "Kill the Gays" rally?


In One Year Out, we're looking at the lives of LGBT people in 2016. We're looking at gay newlyweds, gay parents, gay couples who have no interest in getting married. At people in the Black Lives Matter and Mormon communities. In the world of hip-hop, where use of the word faggot is still rampant. In stand-up comedy, in sports, and in weddings in all 50 states.

The struggle isn't over. Culture never evolves in a straight line. A lot will happen in the years to come. But visibility is the key to victory. We win when we show our faces and tell our stories.

So this is where we stand, together, today. One year out.


2. Where We Stand

In our partnership with Movement Advancement Project, we show that while marriage equality may be law of the land, equality sure isn't.

by Eric Sullivan

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Marriage aside, America in 2016 is a confusing patchwork of conflicting laws affecting the rights and protections of the LGBT community.

In 28 states, an LGBT person could get married on a Saturday and potentially lose their job for it on a Monday. Gay people can still be refused the right to rent an apartment and can be denied service in a restaurant if their sexual orientation offends the landlord or waiter. Twenty-eight states. More than half the country. In 2016. Worse still, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina have state laws preventing the passage of local nondiscrimination laws.

In eight states (Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah), teachers and school administrators are forbidden from "promoting homosexuality" in school. Forty-five states allow licensed clinicians to subject their patients under the age of 18 to "conversion therapy," in which an LGBT person is forced to undergo a battery of purported treatments in an effort to change their sexual orientation. Six states have no hate-crime laws on the books; an additional 14 don't include sexual-orientation protections in theirs. Virginia and Mississippi allow child-welfare agencies to refuse to place children with LGBT parents.

"In 28 states, an LGBT person could get married on a Saturday and possibly lose their job for it on a Monday."

Since the Obergefell decision, several states have introduced bills to further limit the rights of LGBT Americans. In South Carolina, legislators are pushing a law to let county clerks refuse a license to same-sex couples. In Arkansas and Oklahoma, representatives are debating a bill that would allow doctors to deny care to LGBT patients. If you're a gay kid in Tennessee and you want to talk to a private counselor about the anxiety all of this discrimination is causing you, you may be out of luck—the counselor can turn you away.

In pockets across America, city councils have stepped in where state legislators have failed. Council members in Anchorage, Flagstaff, Louisville, New Orleans, Kalamazoo, and hundreds of other cities and towns (and even a couple of rural counties) have passed non-discrimination ordinances (NDOs) that offer protections their state representatives have so far been unable or unwilling to enact. Certain states are leading this municipal charge: A full 56 percent of Florida's population lives in a city or county that protects people from being fired based on sexual orientation and gender identity.


Since the beginning of 2015, five cities in Indiana have passed LGBT-inclusive NDOs prohibiting employment, housing, and public-accommodations discrimination; this includes Columbus, the hometown of governor Mike Pence, who made national news last year for his support for an anti-LGBT measure in the state legislature. Earlier this week, Lakewood became the 15th city in Ohio to pass such an NDO. And earlier this month, Jackson became the first city in the state of Mississippi to do the same.

We teamed with Movement Advancement Project for this interactive map of the U.S., which shows the differences in LGBT non-discrimination legislation across the nation. Esquire then analyzed the data and assigned a letter grade to each state based on how well it protects—or fails to protect—its LGBT citizens. We did not take into consideration the existence of local NDOs; nor did we consider protections for gender identity, since One Year Out is focused on marriage equality (the picture would be even bleaker if we did). Still, the news is not good: Thirty-five states get failing grades. Most upsettingly, no state gets an A (which here would denote a state that explicitly includes LGBT protections in its non-discrimination legislation and doesn't have laws on the books that limit the rights of LGBT people). New Jersey and California tie for top honors, earning solid Bs.


3. How We Got Here

The struggle for marriage equality—and dignity, and visibility, and basic safety—has been going on for many years, and won't stop for many more. Here are some of the events that brought us to this moment.

How One Woman Married Gay Couples Forty Years Ago

In 1975, a county clerk from Colorado named Clela Rorex made history.

As told to Jack Holmes








The Power of Pop

It took the Supreme Court to change the law, but the road to changing America's hearts and minds on same-sex relationships went directly through our theaters and living rooms.


4. Our Biggest Voices

Perspectives from prominent, news-making, groundbreaking members of the LGBT community.


No, Really, Let's Laugh About It

Five gay comedians. One landmark Supreme Court decision.

Chris McPherson

Who better to tell us how American culture has changed with respect to LGBT equality than out gay comedians? They use their experiences of life outside the dominant culture, mining them for laughs in indie rooms in the big cities, comedy-club franchises in the suburbs, and everywhere in between. We assembled five of our favorites—Guy Branum, Rhea Butcher, Solomon Georgio, Eliot Glazer, and Sam Jay—had Esquire Editor-at-Large Dave Holmes moderate, and asked what they've learned on stage about where we stand in 2016.


Hip-Hop's Embrace of Queer Voices

A few years ago, Frank Ocean was an anomaly. Now he's not.

by Britt Julious

Michael Stillwell







"In the last five years, a burgeoning yet disconnected community of LGBT hip-hop artists has bubbled up from the fringes."





5. The Big Day

Fifty states, one capital, and fifty-one ways to seal the deal.

By Elizabeth Griffin

Once the Obergefell v. Hodges decision came down in our favor and the barriers to marriage equality vanished from coast to coast, what had been abstract became very real. The far-off possibility of a wedding got right up close, all in an instant. For many of us, the question switched from Will we get to do this someday? to Are we doing this?

And if we're doing this: How?

Would it be a huge, stage-managed destination throw-down, or a simple trip to city hall? Would the emphasis be on the wedding, or on the party? An Instagram hashtag and a signature cocktail: yes or no?

We asked same-sex couples to share photographs from their wedding day, some from before the decision and some from after. Here are our favorites, one from each of the 50 states. There are as many ways to do this as there are people, and whether the celebrations were massive or very intimate, we think you'll agree: All of the days were mighty big.


6. Our Opponents

In ways both subtle and overt, homophobia is still pervasive.

Douglas Pizac

They Loved the Church. They Loved Each Other More.

For two young men in love in southern Utah, the Mormon Church's anti-LGBT policy was devastating enough. But when Church elders doubled down, they did, too.

by Lorena O'Neil










Overcoming Orlando

We will always be hunted and hated, but we can never be stopped.

by Esquire Editors

David McNew


On June 12, more than 300 people had gathered for Latin Night at Pulse in Orlando, a safe space for the local queer Latinx community. "Safe space" means a lot in Florida, which, for its LGBTQ citizens, is a patchwork of safe and dangerous—some cities and towns have won municipal protections, but there are no statewide labor or housing protections. State conservatives have introduced more than 200 bills targeting LGBTQ rights in the past six months alone. A bill has been introduced recently that would allow doctors to withhold care to LGBTQ people on religious grounds.




"It is at least clear that the Obergefell ruling was not an end to homophobia, but a beginning."


Fighting hate with love has never looked so strong.



7. The Next Generation

What seemed unimaginable a half-century ago—same-sex couples raising children—is now commonplace. But that doesn't mean it's easy.

by David Lat

Gabriela Herman








It's the recipe that's the hard part.



8. The Road Ahead

As recent events illustrate, the fight for our lives is far from over.

Andrew Burton

Those Who Marriage Equality Left Behind

The legalization of same-sex marriage is wonderful. That is, if you're white and privileged. For the rest of us, the fight continues.

by Steven Thrasher


I spent the morning of April 28, 2015, talking to activists on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. The Court's Obergefell decision wouldn't be handed down for nearly two months; on this day, the justices were hearing the case. The caucasity of the crowd couldn't be ignored. I cringed as the overwhelmingly pale D.C. Gay Men's Chorus belted out the Civil Rights-era protest song "We Shall Overcome."

That unseemly co-optation festered in my mind as I drove 40 miles up I-95 to a city on fire.

"How can two such quintessentially American civil-rights issues—the marriage-equality and Black Lives Matter movements—occur so near each other, and yet feel so disconnected?"

The night before, a rebellion had begun in Baltimore in response to the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody, on April 12. The city had quickly emerged as the new ground zero for the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement, but the threat of ongoing violence was getting all the news. As rioters rioted and BLM activists called for peace, the scene felt not 40 miles but 4,000 miles away from the happy-faced activists on the Supreme Court steps.

The once-dominant force of gay politics—formal organizations located in fancy buildings in Washington, D.C., more likely than not headed by masculine-presenting white men—will not take a serious interest in trans people of color or HIV-positive black men and women. Fortunately, these organizations needn't be the center of gay political power anymore.

Black Lives Matter is the most hopeful political movement in America, asserting as it does that each and every black life has value. The movement does not ask for but rather demands liberation in life, employment, civil liberties, and health for all black people. Queerness has been baked into BLM since its inception, and they will continue to fight for the rights of queer people of color.

"For those whose access to the promise of full humanity is not dependent upon that institution, we have known for some time that there is a lot more work to be done."

There are the brave brothers and sisters of color doing work on HIV prevention—most significantly in Georgia and Alabama and Arkansas, far from the eyes and minds of those in D.C. and New York and San Francisco. These people are addressing the ways structural racism contributes to the prevalence of HIV—most notably through mass incarceration and a lack of access to education, economic opportunity, housing, and healthcare. In Atlanta, Charles Stephens of the Counter Narrative Project looks to communicate both why racism is not tangential to homophobia but in fact integral to the stories we tell about it, and the way it makes HIV transmissions more likely. In Little Rock, Penelope Poppers of Lucie's Place addresses the ways coming out may get a teenager kicked out of their family's home. Getting them into a stable home rather than just promoting safe sex, argues Poppers, is a more effective way to keep them from contracting HIV.

Against the trans backlash there is the good leadership of President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who have sued North Carolina for its bathroom ban and issued directives that schools receiving federal money must let students use the bathroom that reflects their gender identity.

And though the scope of Pulse tragedy is still unfolding, the organic formation of solidarity, support, and love in Florida is not coming primarily from outside—it is coming from within Orlando's queer and Latino communities.


The last year of marriage equality has made life quite comfortable for those whose most pressing issues are mortgages, inheritance, wealth management, property ownership, and one kind of love.

For those whose access to the promise of full humanity is not dependent upon that institution, we have known for some time that there is a lot more work to be done. And as Orlando has shown, a safe and loving place for queer people in America is going to require building on the work of the activists who made Stonewall, ACT UP, and marriage happen—and then push forward. We must be as brave and creative as ever.



Happy. Frightened. Worried. Hopeful.

Where do we go from here?

by Larry Kramer

Bryan Derballa

I am happy.

I am frightened.

I am worried.

I am hopeful.

I am happy because we can now get married. The lover I've lived with for many years is now my husband. For the first time in my long-term survivorship, I can allow myself to feel safe. Past a certain age, it is not about sex or drug-fueled dancing till dawn. It is about lying side by side as we sleep together after having kissed good night, knowing that we'll each wake up smiling and that David will make me his special scrambled eggs. Legally. Our bedroom can no longer be invaded by the police, which happened to gay couples in Texas not so long ago. The Internal Revenue Service can no longer gobble up my whole estate when I die so David can't get it, which happened to countless gay men and women before the Supreme Court declared that we are the same as straights.

People tell me I should be grateful I'm still alive. I have almost died a couple of times.

Of course I'm happy to be alive. But I am not grateful for how awful my body often feels, a result of the not-quite-there-yet drugs that greedy pharmaceutical companies continue to foist on us because they make more money selling these than developing ones that cure us. Activists got us these drugs, but once we got them, we stopped fighting and returned to partying. We stopped celebrating the glory of our greatest achievement too soon to get back to where we left off when we started dying like flies.

"We must battle not only against our enemies but also against the straitjackets many of us still wear, which interfere with our ability to fight these enemies in full, free, and in-your-face unity."

I am frightened that everything gay people have fought for could disappear in an instant. There will be new attacks against us in courts and all across the country every single day as our enemies try to whittle away at our existence, just as the enemies of Roe v. Wade have. I am frightened we're not strong enough to fight back to save ourselves. There were so few activists fighting for the HIV meds, compared with our total numbers. I have never been able to satisfactorily answer the question I once asked all of the time: Why isn't every gay man in America fighting to save his own life? Of course now I say every gay person. Our lives will be filled with jeopardy, much of it quite ruthless. We have never lacked for enemies, and they are not going away.

So I am worried about a lot of things. We as a gay population have still not sufficiently solidified into the fighting force we must be if we are to continue to capitalize on this moment of our increasing and visible power. And we as this less-than-unified population have never really been good at fighting back. When you belong to a people who have been so condemned and excoriated and punished and hated and murdered for so many centuries, these traits of passivity and closetedness become part of the genetic makeup. Very few among us are activists for our rights. And being an activist is a seven-day-a-week responsibility.

We must battle not only against our enemies but also against the straitjackets many of us still wear, which interfere with our ability to fight these enemies in full, free, and in-your-face unity. We must have a stronger presence in Washington. We must have lobbyists. More of us must step forth, willing to lead. How many gay leaders can most of us even identify? Rich gays must step up to the plate. The David Geffen Hall should be the David Geffen Foundation for LGBT Equality. There are many gay billionaires and many, many gay millionaires. Why aren't they fighting for their people with the strongest ammunition that any war requires to survive it?

"For the first time in my long-term survivorship, I can allow myself to feel safe."

I worry we'll never learn our history, in all its gore and guts and glory. It still isn't really taught in our schools. Gender studies and queer studies are not the same as gay history. Gay history is George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton and J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn and James Baldwin and Barbara Jordan and Anderson Cooper and Stephen Sondheim and Eleanor Roosevelt and Greta Garbo and Herman Melville and…and…and… Not to mention all of those ancient Greeks. We've been here a long time. A people, to be a people, must have a history to own and be proud of. We must learn who our heroes and heroines, along with our enemies, were and are—to teach all the world the respect we deserve.

I am hopeful because I can now see so many of us, and we can all see more and more of us. Closets are disappearing everywhere. Some gays fear that legal marriage will assimilate us, but I predict just the opposite. Our culture will flourish mightily and even more imaginatively. It's no wonder our enemies are worried by such potential power. This hope excites me.

But hope has a way of disguising, if not downright obliterating, the realities of the moment. There is much work to attend to as we enter a new era.

We must all learn how to fight back. And then we must do so.

I hope that our enemies expect this from the gay population from now on, so we can show them who we really are and what we are capable of achieving.

Motion Graphics by Crystal Law