Supreme Court extends same-sex marriage nationwide

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declared Friday that same-sex couples have
a right to marry anywhere in the United States.

Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of
Columbia.

The court’s 5-4 ruling means the remaining 14 states, in the South and
Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.

Same-sex couples in Arizona have been able to marry since last fall.

The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over
marriage, and gay rights generally.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the
court’s previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996. It came on
the anniversary of two of those earlier decisions.

“No union is more profound than marriage,” Kennedy wrote, joined by the
court’s four more liberal justices.

The ruling will not take effect immediately because the court gives the losing
side roughly three weeks to ask for reconsideration. But some state officials
and county clerks might decide there is little risk in issuing marriage licenses
to same-sex couples.

The cases before the court involved laws from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and
Tennessee that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Those states
have not allowed same-sex couples to marry within their borders and they also
have refused to recognize valid marriages from elsewhere.

Just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal anti-gay
marriage law that denied a range of government benefits to legally married
same-sex couples.

The decision in United States v. Windsor did not address the validity of state
marriage bans, but courts across the country, with few exceptions, said its
logic compelled them to invalidate state laws that prohibited gay and lesbian
couples from marrying.

The number of states allowing same-sex marriage has grown rapidly. As recently
as October, just over one-third of the states permitted same-sex marriage.

There are an estimated 390,000 married same-sex couples in the United States,
according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, which tracks the demographics of gay and
lesbian Americans.

Another 70,000 couples living in states that do not currently
permit them to wed would get married in the next three years, the institute
says. Roughly 1 million same-sex couples, married and unmarried, live together
in the United States, the institute said.

The Obama administration backed the right of same-sex couples to marry.

The
Justice Department’s decision to stop defending the federal anti-marriage law in
2011 was an important moment for gay rights and President Barack Obama declared
his support for same-sex marriage in 2012.

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