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When I came out 45 years ago,
such a ruling by United States Supreme Court was unthinkable. The progress made
by gay people in America
since Stonewall has been nothing short of astounding.
Gay Marriage Backers Win
Supreme Court Victory
WASHINGTON — In a long-sought
victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on
Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex
marriage.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s
four more liberal justices.
The decision, the culmination
of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving
changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now
approve of same-sex marriage.
Justice Kennedy said gay and
lesbian couples had a fundamental right to marry.
“No union is more profound
than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion,
sacrifice, and family,” he wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people
become something greater than once they were.”
“It would misunderstand these
men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” Justice Kennedy
said of the couples challenging state bans on same-sex marriage. “Their plea is
that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment
for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness,
excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal
dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr., in a dissent joined by Justice Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said
the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject.
“If you are among the many
Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex
marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision,” Chief Justice Roberts
wrote. “Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity
for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of
new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with
it.”
In a second dissent, Justice
Scalia mocked Justice Kennedy’s soaring language.
“The opinion is couched in a
style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” Justice Scalia wrote
of his colleague’s work. “Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often
profoundly incoherent.”
As Justice Kennedy finished
announcing his opinion, several attendees seated in the bar section of the
court’s gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and exchanged embraces.
Justice John Paul Stevens,
who retired in 2010, was on hand for the decision and many of the justices’
clerks took seats in the chamber, which was nearly full as the ruling was
announced.
As in earlier civil rights
cases, the Supreme Court had moved cautiously and methodically, laying careful
judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.
As late as October, the
justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing
same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for
gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage
to 24, along with the District of
Columbia, up from 19.
Largely as a consequence of
the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex
marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of
Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.
The court did not agree to
resolve the issue for the rest of the nation until January, in cases filed by gay and lesbian
couples in Kentucky, Michigan,
Ohio and Tennessee. The court heard extended arguments in April, and the justices
seemed sharply divided over what the Constitution has to say about same-sex
marriage.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs
said their clients had a fundamental right to marry and to equal protection,
adding that the bans they challenged demeaned their dignity, imposed countless
practical difficulties and inflicted particular harm on their children.
The Obama administration,
which had gradually come to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, was
unequivocal in urging the justices to rule for the plaintiffs.
“Gay and lesbian people are
equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said. “They deserve equal
protection of the laws, and they deserve it now.”
Lawyers for the four states
said their bans were justified by tradition and the distinctive characteristics
of opposite-sex unions. They said the question should be resolved
democratically, at the polls and in state legislatures, rather than by judges.
The Supreme Court had once
before agreed to hear a case arising from a constitutional challenge to a
same-sex marriage ban, California’s Proposition 8, in 2012 in Hollingsworth v. Perry. At the time, nine states
and the District of Columbia
allowed same-sex couples to marry.
But when the court’s ruling
arrived in June 2013, the justices ducked, with a majority saying the case was
not properly before them, and none of them expressing a view on the ultimate
question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex
marriage.
A second decision the same
day, in United States v. Windsor, provided the movement
for same-sex marriage with what turned out to be a powerful tailwind. The
decision struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred
federal benefits for same-sex couples married in states that allowed such
unions.
The Windsor decision was based partly on
federalism grounds, with Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion stressing that
state decisions on how to treat marriages deserved respect. But lower courts
focused on other parts of his opinion, ones that emphasized the dignity of gay
relationships and the harm that families of gay couples suffered from bans on
same-sex marriage.
In a remarkable and largely
unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the
Windsor
decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
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