Gay Marriage - DOMA, 14th Amendment & Supreme Court | HISTORY

Contents:

• GAY MARRIAGE
• GAY RIGHTS
• SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?
• STAT ACROSS U.S. STILL CLG TO OUTDATED GAY MARRIAGE BANS
• DIPLOMATIC TENSN REPORTEDLY RISG BETWEEN UNED STAT AND JAMAI OVER GAY AMERIN DIPLOMAT

GAY MARRIAGE

Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans In 1970, jt one year after the historic Stonewall Rts that galvanized the gay rights movement, law stunt Richard Baker and librarian Jam McConnell applied for a marriage license Gerald Nelson rejected their applitn bee they were a same-sex uple, and a trial urt upheld his cisn.

GAY RIGHTS

” This lg effectively blocked feral urts om lg on same-sex marriage for s, leavg the cisn solely the hands of stat, which alt blow after blow to those hopg to see gay marriage beg 1973, for stance, Maryland beme the first state to create a law that explicly f marriage as a unn between a man and woman, a belief held by many nservative relig groups. Though the gay rights movement saw some advancements the 1970s and 1980s—such as Harvey Milk beg the first openly gay man elected to public office the untry 1977—the fight for gay marriage ma ltle headway for many years.

In 1989, the San Francis Board of Supervisors passed an ordance that allowed homosexual upl and unmarried heterosexual upl to register for domtic partnerships, which granted hospal visatn rights and other years later, the District of Columbia siarly passed a new law that allowed same-sex upl to register as domtic partners. C., 1993, the hight urt Hawaii led that a ban on same-sex marriage may vlate that state nstutn’s Equal Protectn Clse—the first time a state urt has ever ched toward makg gay marriage Hawaii Supreme Court sent the se—brought by a gay male uple and two lbian upl who were nied marriage licens 1990—back for further review to the lower First Circu Court, which 1991 origally dismissed the the state tried to prove that there was “pellg state tert” jtifyg the ban, the se would be tied up ligatn for the next three Defense of Marriage Act Opponents of gay marriage, however, did not s on their hnch. That is, even if a state ma gay marriage legal, same-sex upl still wouldn’t be able to file e tax jotly, sponsor spo for immigratn benefs or receive spoal Social Secury payments, among many other act was a huge setback for the marriage equaly movement, but transient good news arose three months later: Hawaii Judge Kev S.

SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?

Phg for Change: Civil Unns The next saw a whirlwd of activy on the gay marriage ont, begng wh the year 2000 when Vermont beme the first state to legalize civil unns, a legal stat that provis most of the state-level benefs of years later, Massachetts beme the first state to legalize gay marriage when the Massachetts Supreme Court led that same-sex upl had the right to marry Goodridge v. Kansas and Texas were next 2005, and 2006 saw seven more stat passg Constutnal amendments agast gay towards the end of the , gay marriage beme legal var stat, cludg Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont (the first state to approve by legislative means) and New Hampshire. Domtic Partnerships Throughout the and the begng of the next, California equently ma headl for seawg on the gay marriage state was the first to pass a domtic partnership statute 1999, and legislators tried to pass a same-sex marriage bill 2005 and 2007.

STAT ACROSS U.S. STILL CLG TO OUTDATED GAY MARRIAGE BANS

For the first time the untry’s history, voters (rather than judg or legislators) Mae, Maryland, and Washgton approved Constutnal amendments permtg same-sex marriage marriage also beme a feral issue 2010, Massachetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, found Sectn 3 of DOMA—the part of the 1996 law that fed marriage as a unn between one man and one woman—to be unnstutnal. Wdsor, nservative Jtice Anthony Kennedy sid wh Jtic Ruth Bar Gsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan favor of same-sex marriage rights, ultimately makg gay marriage legal across the natn June this time, was still outlawed only 13 stat, and more than 20 other untri had already legalized gay marriage, startg wh the Netherlands December 2000. Supreme Court agreed to review a number of feral appeals urt cisns on same-sex marriage: one strikg down part of the feral Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which f marriage as a unn between a man and a woman, and another validatg California’s Proposn 8, a ballot measure passed 2008 that amend the state’s nstutn to ban gay marriage.

Between the pol, a fierce battle is takg place ptg those who hope all gays and lbians, regardls of where they live, will soon have the right to marry agast those who believe that same-sex marriage is helpg to unrme heterosexual marriage, which they see as the foundatn of healthy fai.

DIPLOMATIC TENSN REPORTEDLY RISG BETWEEN UNED STAT AND JAMAI OVER GAY AMERIN DIPLOMAT

Allowg gay and lbian upl to wed, they ntend, will radilly refe marriage and further weaken at a time when the stutn is already ser trouble due to high divorce rat and a signifint and growg number of out-of-wedlock births.

While all laws legalizg same-sex marriage nta some nscience protectns allowg church and other relig groups to refe to marry gay and lbian upl, the legal ground is murkier for religly affiliated anizatns, such as hospals, schools and other social-service provirs, that may not want to grant benefs to the spoe of an employee a same-sex marriage or provi adoptn and other servic to a gay or lbian uple that are routely provid to heterosexual upl.

Ined, the ordatn and marriage of gay persons has been a growg wedge between the socially liberal and nservative wgs of the Epispal, Lutheran and Prbyterian church, leadg some nservative ngregatns – and even whole dc – to break away om their natnal church as they bee more open to gay clergy and gay marriage. Gay and lbian Amerins have been llg for the right to marry, or at least to create more formalized relatnships, sce the 1960s, but same-sex marriage has only emerged as a natnal issue wh the last 20 years. The spark that started the bate occurred Hawaii 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court led that an existg law banng same-sex marriage would be unnstutnal unls the state ernment uld show that had a pellg reason for discrimatg agast gay and lbian upl.

Even though this cisn did not immediately lead to the legalizatn of gay marriage that state (the se was sent back to a lower urt for further nsiratn and Hawaiian voters ultimately approved a referendum leavg the issue the hands of the state’s legislature), did spark a natnwi backlash.

While battl have been ragg many stat over whether to accept or ban same-sex marriage, a number of stat have enacted laws that tablish civil unns or domtic partnerships, both of which aim to give gay and lbian upl many or most of the rights and rponsibili of matrimony whout actually grantg them the right to wed. What we would ll the "gay rights movement" or the "LGBT muny, " that's a very big aln, and there are a whole lot of different nstuenci: gay men and lbians who are vted marriage, [as well as] bisexual and transgenr people who often uld marry the people that they love, regardls of what state law was about marriage. You go back to the 1990s when this bate emerged, and there were people whose top prry was segregatg ary and ernment service so openly gay people uld serve, or who wanted jt basic nondiscrimatn protectns, [like] wrg sexual orientatn to hate crim laws.

And one of the sort of remarkable parts of the story is not jt how ultimately gay marriage mpaigners triumphed over opponents of same-sex marriage, but how wh their own LGBT muny and polil movement, they raised the issue of marriage so that went higher and higher on the list of prri.