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- Same-sex marriage in Tennessee has been legal since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015. Governor Bill Haslam quickly announced that the state would abide by the court's decision, and same-sex couples began to marry in Tennessee. Previously, Tennessee had banned same-sex marriage both by statute and its State Constitution. Despite same-sex marriage being legal in Tennessee and now enjoying majority support from the public, with a 2021 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute showing that 54% of Tennessee residents supported same-sex marriage, a number of state politicians and officials continue to oppose it. In 2022, an attempt by a group of Republican lawmakers to curb the legal rights of married same-sex couples would have inadvertently created a loophole allowing child marriages and polygamy in the state. The attempt was widely mocked on social media and opposed by a majority of Democratic and Republican politicians. In 2018, House Republicans blocked a bill to ban child marriages because the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a group which opposes same-sex marriage, feared it could interfere with an anti-same-sex marriage lawsuit it had filed in Bradley County; the bill was passed following outcry, and the lawsuit was later dismissed by a circuit court judge in March 2019. (en)
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