US Marriage Legal!

From the BBC:
"US Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal nationwide"

The US Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is a legal right across the United States. It means the 14 states with bans on same-sex marriage will no longer be able to enforce them.   Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the plaintiffs asked "for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." The ruling brings to an end more than a decade of bitter legal battles. Same-sex couples in several affected states including Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and Texas rushed to wed on Friday.  However officials in some states including Mississippi and Louisiana said marriages had to wait until procedural issues were addressed. President Barack Obama said the ruling was a "victory for America".  "When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free " he said.  The first state to allow same-sex marriage was Massachusetts, which granted the right in 2004.

In recent years, a wave of legal rulings and a dramatic shift in public opinion have expanded gay marriage in the US.  In 2012, the high court struck down a federal anti same-sex marriage law.

States affected:

• Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, most of Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.

 

^  This decision gives new hope to those who doubted the Supreme Court (like I did) after their recent ruling on Obamacare. Their decision that gay marriage is constitutional and that all 50 states and DC has to not only recognize gay marriages from other states, but also to perform them within their state goes along the same lines as their decision in the 1960s that segregation (ie separate, but equal) of blacks was unconstitutional. It doesn't matter if you are gay or straight (ie "straight, but not narrow.") This is a Civil Rights issue that has finally been resolved.  Hopefully, the 14 states that this really affected will not follow the segregationists' example of fighting with Federal troops to stop gays from marrying. That was a lost cause back then and would be today. The flag above shows where gay marriage is now legal in the US (ie the dark blue.) Technically the whole map should be dark blue as of today. Gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states, DC and Guam. The US territories of: Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands still forbid gay marriage, but hopefully that will change in the near-future.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33290341