Same-Sex Weddings After 2005
Massachusetts blazed a trail for other states to follow when it ended up being the first state in the union to sanction same-sex marriages. LGBT couples from around the nation soon overwhelmed the City of Cambridge to apply for marriage licenses.
The states of Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Oregon immediately followed, while some state Supreme Courts did nullify same-sex marriage licenses after holding that the metropolitan areas which provided the licenses did not have the authority to do so.
Not all people were thrilled about the LGBT marriage trend hitting American society, as in 2004, overeighty percent of states implemented policies or constitutional changes that prevented same-sex marriages. The Deep South led the fight to keep marital relationships defined as a blessed vow under God “between a man and a woman.”
The concept of minimizing LGBT civil liberties by not permitting them to tie the knot extended west, and itcontinued across the entire middle states, ultimately heading the north to the Dakotas.
It was only the in East and West Coast regions where same-sex marriages began to smash the religious stigma that the majority of the nation placed upon it.
California did what?
Ironically, liberal California prohibited same-sex marriages after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004. Identical events occurred in Arizona in 2006, which lead voters there to authorize a constitutional change that characterized marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
That being said, state remedies did not detour the United States Legislator, Courts or even the President from safeguarding basic civil rights for all LBGT citizens residing in the United States.
In 2008, after a three-year, “thumbs up-thumbs down” battle on the LGBT marriage issue, newly elected President Barack Obama signed a memorandum offering benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
This executive mandate called upon federal agencies to broaden a full range of benefits to the children and same-sex companions of any federal worker who applied for it.
“…when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about.”
–President Obama, 2008.
A conservative Congress did what?
The next year, the District of Columbia endorsed a law approving same-sex marital rites. LGBT couples could also record their domestic partnership in the nation’s capitol as well.
What made this landmark legislation so significant, aside from that fact that it expanded LGBT civil rights, was that is indicated pro, LGBT marriage laws were ultimately heading south.
