Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Supreme Court ruled on the 26th of June 2003 that intimate consensual sexual conduct is part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision explicitly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 ruling that had found sodomy laws to be constitutional.
Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage on the 17th of May 2004 following a Supreme Judicial Court decision made six months earlier. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands after the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on the 26th of June 2015.
Gallup's 2024 poll found 69% support for same-sex marriage among Americans. Previous polls from 2022 and 2023 indicated 71% support before dropping to 69% in 2024.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the 15th of June 2020 that sexual orientation and gender identity are included under 'sex' as a prohibited ground of employment discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This ruling impacts other federal civil rights barring sex discrimination in education, health care, housing, and financial credit.
As of August 2025, twenty-seven states had enacted some form of ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Nineteen of these bans were enacted in 2023 alone.