Former Justice Kennedy Gives a Religion Lesson on LGBTQ+ Equality

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the landmark 2015 Obergefell decision which legalized marriage equality across the U.S., is now saying that he is worried that this decision will stand the test of time.

Former Justice Anthony Kennedy

When asked about the stability of the ruling during an interview on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America show, Kennedy, who is a lifelong practicing Catholic, answered “We’ll see. That’s for the next generation to decide.

Sitting Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have called for the decision to be reconsidered, and several states and a number of religious groups are supporting such an action.  Kennedy sees great social chaos if the decision were overturned: “There’s been so much reliance on the marriage opinion that if it were to reverse, people who had had what they thought were decent, honorable lives all of a sudden would be adrift again.”

According to the Williams Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles, there are 823,000 married same-gender couples in the U.S., 591,000 of which were wed after the Obergefell decision.

What struck me most about the Kennedy interview was his explanation of how he, who was generally more conservative-minded, came to see the need for marriage equality:

“There were thousands of children that were adopted by gay parents, and for them to know that their parents were not recognized by society, [by] the law, as real parents, as something that was marginally illegal, could create a profound sadness for thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of children.”

Kennedy said he was not aware of any gay parents, and nor did he have gay friends at the time, but that he “began to learn about the hurt and the anguish and the desire these people had to live a wonderful life and contribute to our country.”

For me, this is probably one of the most Catholic legal statements I have heard. It follows Pope Francis’ admonition that Catholics should be concerned with real people, real problems, not hypothetically ideal ones.  Kennedy’s thought evolved to a place where he based his decision on what was actually happening in people’s lives, not with some legal or religious definition of what marriage should be.

He also did rely on a legal idea that is also very Catholic. He said the Obergefell decision was based on the idea that all people should have “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

When he was asked if that legal principle also applied to transgender people, Kennedy said that it must:

“I don’t think we can have a peaceful world unless all sides agree that whatever we think of your ambitions, or your beliefs, we will treat you with dignity, and we will discuss it in a thoughtful, rational, productive, decent way, respecting your dignity. You believe in X. We believe in Y. We can recognize that both of those have some merit to them.”

What a great religion lesson for all Catholics!

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, February 24, 2026