SAME-SEX MARRIED COUPLES LEAD GROWING SHARE OF US HOUSEHOLDS

The number of U.S. households led by same-sex married couples has steadily increased over the past decade, new Pew data shows.

By Brooke Migdon

More U.S. households are headed by same-sex married couples, according to data released by the Pew Research Center, with the number steadily growing over the last decade.

Large shares of married LGBTQ couples said they were married for reasons including love, companionship, and wanting to make a formal commitment to one another, according to a survey from the nonpartisan think tank based on responses from more than 1,100 U.S. adults married to or living with a same-sex partner. The data reflect responses from a larger poll of LGBTQ Americans conducted from January 8 to 19.

Sixty-four percent also said legal rights were a major factor in getting married.

The survey, released during Pride Month, comes as a growing number of Republican state lawmakers are urging the Supreme Court to reverse its landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S. and celebrates its 10th anniversary this month.

In January, Idaho lawmakers passed a resolution calling for the court to reconsider its decision, which the justices cannot do unless they are presented with a case on the issue. The nonbinding resolution expresses the Legislature’s collective opinion that the Obergefell ruling “is an illegitimate overreach” and has caused “collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty, including religious liberty.”

Republican lawmakers in at least five other states, including Democratic-controlled Michigan, have issued similar calls to the Supreme Court.

In June 2025, Southern Baptists overwhelmingly endorsed a ban on same-sex marriage at an annual meeting in Dallas. The sweeping resolution approved at the gathering of more than 10,000 church representatives says legislators have a responsibility to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family” and to oppose laws contradicting “what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.”

It calls for “laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman.”

While unenforceable because of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, more than half of the states have statutes or constitutional amendments that ban same-sex marriage still on the books.

“Zombie laws” against marriage equality are largely concentrated in the South and Midwest, where same-sex married couples are less likely to live, according to Thursday’s Pew Research Center survey. Compared with different-sex couples, same-sex couples are more likely to settle in the West and Northeast.

According to Pew’s findings, same-sex married couples also tend to have higher levels of education than different-sex couples and are more likely to both work full-time, particularly in couples of two men, which have by far the highest median household income, at $172,689.

The median income for a household of two women stands at $121,900, according to Pew, only slightly higher than the median income for different-sex couples, $121,000.

Same-sex couples also appear far less likely to have children compared with different-sex couples, according to Thursday’s findings. While roughly 53 percent of different-sex married couples are raising children, just 31 percent of couples with two women and 10 percent of couples with two men are parents.

At least a portion of that can be linked to barriers to parenting that are unique to same-sex couples. A 2024 Williams Institute study found that 32 percent of couples said “not having one of the needed parts,” such as sperm, egg, or uterus, was a barrier to having children.

Nearly a third said concerns about discrimination gave them pause about becoming parents, and 25 percent said insufficient health insurance coverage presented a challenge to parenthood. Most same-sex couples said the costs associated with options such as sperm donation, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and private adoption had stopped them from becoming parents.

According to Thursday’s Pew survey, most LGBTQ adults who are either married or living with a same-sex partner are at least “fairly” satisfied with their relationship, including 63 percent who said their relationship is going “very well.” Those who are married are more likely than those unmarried to say the relationship is going very well.