The untold story of the improbable campaign that finally tipped the U.S. Supreme Court.
May 18, 1970, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell walked into a courthouse in Minneapolis, paid $10, and applied for a marriage license. The county clerk, Gerald Nelson, refused to give it to them. Obviously, he told them, marriage was for people of the opposite sex; it was silly to think otherwise.
Baker, a law student, didn’t agree. He and McConnell, a librarian, had met at a Halloween party in Oklahoma in 1966, shortly after Baker was pushed out of the Air Force for his sexuality. From the beginning, the men were committed to one another. In 1967, Baker proposed that they move in together. McConnell replied that he wanted to get married—really, legally married. The idea struck even Baker as odd at first, but he promised to find a way and decided to go to law school to figure it out.
Last week, June 26, 2015, the high court reversed itself and declared that gays could marry nationwide.
“Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his sweeping decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
~~GALLERY~~
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The plaintiffs’ arguments in Obergefell were strikingly similar to those Baker made back in the 1970’s. And the Constitution has not changed since Baker made his challenge (save for the ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, on congressional salaries).
But the high court’s view of the legitimacy and constitutionality of same-sex marriage changed radically: In the span of 43 years, the notion had gone from ridiculous to constitutionally mandated.
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#LoveWins: Historic Victory for Marriage Equality in Ireland
GLOBAL MOMENTUM
International Progress Toward the Freedom to Marry
“The global momentum for the freedom to marry reflects and reinforces the progress we are making here in the U.S. – and we look now to the Supreme Court to bring our country to national resolution,”
Evan Wolfson said today about historic Ireland marriage vote.
Nineteen countries have approved the freedom to marry for same-sex couples nationwide (Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, France, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Britain, Luxembourg, Finland and Ireland), while two others have regional or court-directed provisions enabling same-sex couples to share in the freedom to marry (Mexico and the United States).
In Slovenia, Parliament approved a marriage bill in March 2015 and is headed to the president’s desk. Many other countries provide some protections for such couples. As more and more countries and parts of the United States win the freedom to marry, we see that families are helped, and communities and countries made stronger, by protecting all loving committed couples.
