Michigan Democrats, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, are pushing back against a Republican-led resolution asking the Supreme Court to reverse its decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver (R), whose website describes him as the state House’s “most conservative” member, filed the resolution Tuesday. A press release from Schriver’s office says the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges “is at odds with the sanctity of marriage, the Michigan Constitution and principals on which the country was established.”
It has 12 Republican co-sponsors.
In a video on the social platform X, Whitmer called Schriver’s resolution “hateful.”
“In Michigan, everyone has the freedom to marry who they love. It’s not only the law of the land; it’s a non-negotiable,” she said. “Right now, however, some extreme members of the Michigan legislature are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn marriage equality. Here’s my response to that: hell no.”
“This is personal for me, just like so many Michiganders, and I’m not going to allow the people I love most in the world to have less rights than anyone else,” said Whitmer, whose eldest daughter, Sherry, came out publicly as a lesbian in 2022.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), who married her wife, Alanna Maguire, one month after the Supreme Court issued its Obergefell ruling, responded to Schriver’s announcement of the resolution with a photo of her wearing her wedding ring.
“Come and get it!” Nessel wrote in a post on X.
As a private attorney, Nessel argued for the plaintiffs in DeBoer v. Snyder, a case that challenged Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban. The case was later consolidated with three others and appealed to the Supreme Court as Obergefell v. Hodges.
State Rep. Jason Morgan (D), who is gay, said Schriver’s resolution is “extreme and anti-family, and people need to say ‘hell no’ to this homophobic resolution.”
“Attacking my family will not improve the lives of Michiganders,” Morgan wrote on X.
Schriver, first elected to the Michigan House in 2022, has voiced opposition to same-sex marriage rights before, and in a December social media post, said the U.S. should “make gay marriage illegal again.”
“America only ‘accepted’ gay marriage after it was thrusted into her by a perverted Supreme Court ruling,” Schriver wrote in a second post. “America 2124 doesn’t have to be as dysfunctional as America 2024.”
He publicly supported an Italian law preventing couples from traveling abroad for surrogacy, a measure criticized for its disproportionate impact on gay couples.
Schriver’s resolution comes after Idaho Republicans successfully pushed a similar measure through the state House in January.
