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On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health six months earlier.
6 November: Voters in the US states of Maine, Maryland, and Washington approve same-sex marriage laws in referendums, becoming the first jurisdictions in the world to legalize same-sex marriage through this process, while voters in the US state of Minnesota become the first to reject a constitutional amendment seeking to ban same-sex marriage ...
- Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans
- Marriage Equality: Turning The Tide
- The Defense of Marriage Act
- Pushing For Change: Civil Unions
- Domestic Partnerships
- United States v. Windsor
- Obergefell v. Hodges
- Full Marriage Equality Attained
In 1970, just one year after the historic Stonewall Riots that galvanized the gay rights movement, law student Richard Baker and librarian James McConnell applied for a marriage license in Minnesota. Clerk Gerald Nelson rejected their application because they were a same-sex couple, and a trial court upheld his decision. Baker and McConnell appeale...
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, same-sex couples saw the first signs of hope on the marriage front in a long time. In 1989, the San FranciscoBoard of Supervisors passed an ordinance that allowed homosexual couples and unmarried heterosexual couples to register for domestic partnerships, which granted hospital visitation rights and other benefits...
Opponents of gay marriage, however, did not sit on their haunches. In response to Hawaii’s 1993 court decision in Baehr v. Lewin, the U.S. Congress in 1996 passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which President Bill Clintonsigned into law. DOMA didn’t ban gay marriage outright but specified that only heterosexual couples could be granted federa...
The next decade saw a whirlwind of activity on the gay marriage front, beginning with the year 2000 when Vermontbecame the first state to legalize civil unions, a legal status that provides most of the state-level benefits of marriage. Three years later, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage when the Massachusetts Supreme Co...
Throughout the decade and the beginning of the next, California frequently made headlines for seesawing on the gay marriage issue. The state was the first to pass a domestic partnership statute in 1999, and legislators tried to pass a same-sex marriage bill in 2005 and 2007. The bills were vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggerboth times. In May ...
The early 2010s continued the state-level battles over gay marriage that defined the preceding decade, with at least one notable event. For the first time in the country’s history, voters (rather than judges or legislators) in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved Constitutional amendments permitting same-sex marriage in 2012. Same-sex marriage ...
Though the U.S. government could now no longer deny federal benefits to married same-sex couples, other parts of DOMA were still intact, including Section 2, which declared that states and territories could refuse to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples from other states. Soon enough, however, DOMA lost its power thanks to the historic Oberg...
As with United States v. Windsor, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kaganin favor of same-sex marriage rights, ultimately making gay marriage legal across the nation in June 2015. By this time, it was still outlawed in only 13 states, and more than 20 other countr...
April 7: The Vermont General Assembly overrides Governor Jim Douglas's April 6 veto of same-sex marriage legislation, making it the first state to institute same-sex marriage by statute. April 23: Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell signs legislation converting existing civil unions into marriages effective October 1, 2010.
Jun 26, 2013 · Twelve of the 50 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized gay marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court was expected on Wednesday to issue rulings in two major cases relating to gay...
Jun 28, 2017 · Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage, and the first legal same-sex marriage was performed on May 17, 2004—a day when seventy-seven other couples across the state also tied...
In the landmark case One, Inc. v. Olesen, the United States Supreme Court rules in favor of the First Amendment rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) magazine "One: The...
