Will the U.S. Supreme Court torpedo gay marriage in its next term, which begins October 6? SCOTUS could use Kim Davis to do so. But it should not.

Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, cited her religious faith for not issuing a marriage license to David Ermold and David Moore, a currently wed gay couple. Davis’ stand cost her six days in jail in 2015. The Davids sued Davis and won $50,000 each for “emotional damages” and $260,000 in legal fees. Davis is appealing this jury verdict and — bonus! — also wants SCOTUS to reverse its “egregiously wrong” decision and overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that made gay marriage a constitutional right.

SCOTUS should welcome Davis’ case and, ultimately, use it to maximize liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

SCOTUS should honor Obergefell’s precedent and keep gay marriage constitutional. If spending their lives together fulfills David and David, hooray! Since they are consenting adults, what happens when they click off their lights is nobody’s damn business.

SCOTUS should let Davis and others with religious or even secular objections to gay marriage, abstain. If giving gay couples marriage licenses is the Highway to Hell to Davis, or something merely unethical to an atheist, fine! Such public employees should be excused from handling gay-marriage licenses. (Barring government from licensing marriages would halt this controversy instantly.) Likewise, judges who reject gay marriage as either sinful or misguided never should be obliged to officiate at gay weddings.

Across America, there are enough bureaucrats, city councilmen, and other officials to provide gay couples whatever assistance they need to wed while also accommodating public servants who conscientiously object. The core American value of non-coercion should shield Americans from being forced to do what they rather would avoid. This general distaste for mandates excludes tax evasion, alas. But the point persists.

Likewise, if women must have access to abortions, no doctor or nurse ever should be compelled to perform one. Americans who cherish a woman’s right to choose an abortion also must respect a woman’s right to choose not to execute an abortion. (Ditto for men.)

Similarly, Catholic and other religious (or even secular) adoption agencies should not be forced to place children with gay couples. This surely is heartbreaking for those wish to adopt. And many of them would make fine parents. For all of the emotional and psychological benefits of a child having a mother and father, having two dads would be a massive improvement for a little boy or girl who bounces from foster home to foster home or stares all day at the drably painted walls of an orphanage.

That said, private parties — from churches to foundations — have their rights, too. And their religious and ethical beliefs trump those of potential adoptive parents. If a private store can reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, private adoption agencies should enjoy at least as much deference.

Indeed, Catholic Charities of Baltimore took its tenets so seriously that it got out of the adoption business in 2020, rather than serve gay couples. Catholic Charities of Boston did the same in 2006. Agree or disagree with these views, even critics must admit that this represents serious commitment to what these people hold dear. And that’s not nothing.

This case Ermold v. Davis arises while appreciation of gay marriage has fallen, which Gallup recently confirmed. While a record 71 percent of U.S. adults endorsed gay marriage in a May 2023 Gallup poll, that number dropped to 68 percent in May 2025. Democrat support rose slightly, from 87 percent in May 2022 to 88 percent this year. Independents peaked at 77 percent in 2023 and slipped to 76 percent today. Meanwhile, gay marriage has cratered among Republicans. In May 2022, 55 percent of GOP respondents okayed these unions. Last May: 41 percent. This issue’s Democrat-Republican gap is a record 47 percent.

This disenchantment with gay marriage coincides with mounting distaste with transmania, Dylan Mulvaney’s Bud Light disaster, and men who think they are women swiping sports titles from real women. Even worse, these “women” with penises literally traverse female locker rooms as their junk dangles between their legs. Ten years ago, this was indecent exposure. Cops would have raced in and cuffed the offender. Today, “women” with male genitalia claim a legal right to display their wares, while real women recoil.

The “LGBTQIA2s+” alphabet people demand that Americans swallow an endless supply of genders, pronouns, and “identities” that not even Team Alphabet can define. Drag Queen Story Hour showcases men dressed gaudily as women reading sexually charged texts to first and second graders. A Dallas-area gay bar hosted a “family friendly” event in June 2022 called Drag Your Kids to Pride. Children there watched a drag queen dance before a sign that read: “It’s Not Gonna Lick Itself.”

Anyone who finds these things unusual or inappropriate is declared a transphobe, bigot, or domestic terrorist.

Also unhelpful: the hard-Left Alphabet People will not simply let reluctant Americans quietly tolerate gay marriage. Instead, these radicals insist that the entire country wave their pom poms and salute the increasingly cluttered “Progress Flag.”

Alphabetniks have demanded that Christians who oppose gay marriage design gay-wedding invitations, bake gay-wedding cakes, and photograph gay-wedding ceremonies. This is no less sadistic than a neo-Nazi club berating a Jewish baker into creating a Happy Birthday, Unser Führer cake for its April 20 salute to the über-dictator.

No surprise, these in-your-face tactics also have curbed enthusiasm for gay marriage.

Amid this chaos, many Americans have seen the G in “LGBTQIA2s+” and, via collective guilt by association, assumed that all gay people cheer these outrages. The TQIA2S+ anvil is dragging normal LGBs beneath the waves. Until the latter tell the former to sod off, gay marriage’s popularity will keep lagging. And remember: Supreme Court justices read opinion polls.

Saving gay marriage will require a big, fat gay divorce between normal gay people and the homophobic TQIA2S+ freaks. This division cannot come soon enough.

SCOTUS’ next move is a mystery. It might accept Ermold v. Davis or abstain while lower courts grapple with this dispute for years. If SCOTUS does intervene, this common-sense compromise would allow gay couples to enjoy equal protection of the marriage laws and let gay-marriage critics walk away. Such a SCOTUS decision should satisfy the most Americans.

Who could ask for anything more?

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Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.