Letter to the Supreme Court Justices

PreachingPersonal Reflection
Written By Rev. Kevin L. Strickland

This post was first published on Bishop Strickland’s Facebook page.

August 11, 2025

To the Honorable Justices of the United States Supreme Court,

I write to you as a citizen of this nation, as Bishop of the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and as an openly gay man who is legally and faithfully married to my husband.

With deep concern, I have followed the recent petition asking this Court to reconsider and potentially overturn the landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, a ruling that affirmed the constitutional right of same-gender couples to marry. As both a public faith leader and someone whose own marriage was made possible by that decision, I feel a moral and pastoral obligation to speak with clarity, compassion, and urgency.

In my role as bishop, I shepherd a diverse and faithful community across Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, regions where LGBTQIA+ individuals have long faced exclusion, marginalization, and sometimes violence. Through years of theological discernment, prayer, and faithful conversation, the ELCA has affirmed that same-gender couples are fully capable of embodying the love, commitment, and covenant that Christian marriage represents. We marry same-gender couples not in defiance of our beliefs, but in fidelity to them.

Marriage, in our tradition, is a sacred vocation of mutual love and responsibility, a reflection of God’s covenant with humanity. My own marriage bears witness to that truth daily, as do the many same-gender couples in our synod who have formed loving, committed, Christ-centered families. To suggest that these relationships are undeserving of legal protection or societal recognition is not only unjust, but also spiritually and constitutionally unfounded.

The prospect of overturning Obergefell not only threatens legal stability but imperils the safety, dignity, and well-being of millions of LGBTQ+ Americans, particularly in states like those in my synod, where such rights were only secured through federal action. Stripping away these protections would send a devastating message: that some lives matter less, that some love is less holy, that some families are not worth defending.

I must ask plainly: How does this make America great? From where I stand, as a pastor, a citizen, and a married gay man, it feels less like a call to moral renewal and more like permission for America to hate. It would embolden discrimination cloaked in religious or political language, while undermining the very freedoms our Constitution promises to protect.

This is not a moment to retreat from justice, but to reaffirm it. Equal protection under the law is not a special right, it is a foundational one. I urge this Court not to abandon its own precedent, nor the countless families whose lives and futures rest upon it.

With deep faith and enduring hope,

+The Rev. Dr. Kevin L. Strickland
Bishop of the Southeastern Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Rev. Kevin L. Strickland

Rev. Kevin L. Strickland is serving his second six-year term as bishop of the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). He previously served as assistant to the bishop and executive for worship with the ELCA churchwide organization in Chicago, as pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Nashville, Tenn., and as pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Maryville, Tenn. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Newberry College in 2004; a Master of Divinity from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in 2008; and a Doctor of Ministry from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta in 2024.

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