In the United States, same-sex marriage has been a complex topic for years. One year after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 that progressed the gay rights movement, Richard Baker and James McConnell applied for a marriage license in Minnesota. Because they were a same-sex couple, Clerk Gerald Nelson rejected their application and a trial court endorsed his decision. The couple appealed two years later in 1972, but the supreme court declined to hear the case because the Supreme Court in 1972 declined to hear the case (“for want of a substantial federal question.”) which means that they felt the case wasn’t important. In 1973, Maryland became the first state to pass a law that clearly defines marriage as strictly a union between a man and a woman. Other states quickly followed like Virginia in 1975, and Florida, California, and Wyoming in 1977.

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The gay rights movement saw some improvements in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, In 1997, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man elected into public office in the country. The fight for gay marriage made little advances for many years. However, In 1989, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law that allowed couples of the LGBTQIA+ community to register for domestic partnerships, which allowed hospital visitation rights and other benefits. Three years later, the district of Columbia passed a law that allowed homosexual couples to register as domestic partners. Like San Francisco’s law, D.C’s domestic partnership law was nothing close to marriage, but it did grant same-sex couples important benefits such as allowing partners to receive health care coverage if their spouse was employed by the D.C. government. The first time a state court has ever inched toward making gay marriage legal was in 1993 when the highest court in Hawaii ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage may violate the state constitutional Equal Protection Clause. 
 

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Fast forward to 2000: Vermont became the first state to legalize civil unions, which is 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 Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry in Goodridge V Department of Public Health, (a ruling unlike Hawaii's wouldn't be overturned by voters). The state introduced the country to gay marriage (except for the federal benefits) when it began issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004. Later in 2004, the US Senate blocked a constitutional amendment that was supported by President George W Bush, which would outlaw gay marriage across the country. The year 2004 was a notable year for couples in many other states as well but for the opposite reason. Ten, typically conservative States, followed with Oregon and enacted state-level bans on gay marriage. Kansas and Texas were next in 2005, and in 2006 seven more Southern states that passed Constitutional Amendments against gay marriage. 

 

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Towards the end of the decade, gay marriage became legal in various States including Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont (which was the first state to approve it by law) and New Hampshire. California often made headlines for “seesawing” on the gay marriage issue throughout the successive decades. California was the first state to pass a domestic partnership statute in 1999; the legislators tried to pass a same-sex marriage bill in 2005 and 2007; the bills were both voted by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In May of 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the 1977 state law that banned same-sex marriage. Later voters approved Proposition 8 which also restricted marriage to straight couples. The highly contentious ballot measure was declared unconstitutional two years later though the multiple appeals that kept the matter unsettled until 2013 where the US Supreme Court dismissed the case. Hollingsworth V Perry legalized same-sex marriage in California.

 

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In early 2010, the state-level battles continued over gay marriage, which would define the preceding decade with at least one notable event. For the first time in the country's history, voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved Constitutional Amendments permitting same-sex marriage in 2012. Same-sex marriage became a federal topic once again. In 2010, Massachusetts, which was the first state to legalize gay marriage, found that section 3 of the DOMA which was the part of the 1996 law that a defined marriage as a union between strictly one man and one woman was unconstitutional. West United States V Windsor conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan in favor of same-sex marriage rights and ultimately made gay marriage legal across the nation in June of 2015. At this time it, however, it was still outlawed in 13 states. More than 20 other countries had already legalized gay marriage.

 

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Greg Borski told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the future of gay marriage scares him because there's always a push back--they are slowly chipping away LGBTQIA+ rights, “a little here, a little there.” Ever since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, LGBTQIA+ rights have come under increasing pressure through executive order and legal challenge. In 2017, Trump announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military. In June 2020, Trump revoked the Obama-era guidelines that protected trans people from Healthcare discrimination. U.S chief executive of family equality (LGBTQIA+ rights advocate) Stan Sloan said “we have an Administration that is trying to turn back the clock.” The Trump administration argued against extending workplace protections for LGBTQIA+ people, which was denied by the Supreme Court's historic decision in June of 2020 ruling that the federal law protected gay and transgender people from discrimination at work. Despite this, gay and lesbian families as well as LGBTQIA+ activists  could become a target. Pope Francis said in “Francesco”( which premiered on Wednesday) that “homosexual people have a right to be in a family… They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or made miserable over it. What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered .” He also said that he “stood up for that,” referring to the time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires when, although opposing same-sex marriages in law, he supported some legal protections for same-sex couples. “This was his position as Archbishop of Buenos Aires,”  said Mr. Ivereigh (Pope Francis's biographer). “He was always opposed to marriage being for same-sex couples. But he believed the church should advocate for civil union law for gay couples to give them legal protection.”  However, in 2013, the Pope said that that if same-sex couples were allowed to adopt, “there could be affected children…  every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.” That same year he reaffirmed the church's position that homosexual acts were sinful but that homosexual orientation was not. ”If a person is gay and seeks God and has a good will oh, who am I to judge?” People of the LGBTQIA+ community should be treated as equals. Being part of the community is not hurting anyone; it is simply just being yourself. For years the community has been hated and disrespected.

 

Please remember: Love is Love!!!