In the United States, the history of same-sex marriage dates from the 1800s with union of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. They became more publicly discussed beginning in the early 1940s, when the first lawsuits seeking legal recognition of same-sex relationships brought the question of civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples to public attention though they proved unsuccessful. However marriage wasn't a request for the LGBTQ movement until the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington (1987). The subject became increasingly prominent in U.S. politics following the 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in Baehr v. Miike that suggested the possibility that the state's prohibition might be unconstitutional. That decision was met by actions at both the federal and state level to restrict marriage to male-female couples, notably the enactment at the federal level of the Defense of Marriage Act.
The first legal same-sex marriage ceremony in the United States happened on February 12, 2004 between Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, when mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom ordered city hall to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This decision resulted in the celebration of the first gay marriage in the United States, when Martin and Lyon became the first gay couple to tie the knot and get official recognition of their fifty year relationship (Marriage Equality New York).
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health six months earlier. Just as with the Hawaii decision, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts provoked a reaction from opponents of same-sex marriage that resulted in further legal restrictions being written into state statutes and constitutions. On August 4, 2004, a Washington court ruled for the plaintiffs in a suit challenging that state's defense of marriage act. King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing became the first trial judge in the nation to rule that a state law prohibiting same-sex marriages, or DOMA, was unconstitutional; the ruling was narrowly overturned on appeal in 2006. The movement to obtain marriage rights for same-sex couples expanded steadily from that time until in late 2014 lawsuits had been brought in every state that still denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
By late 2014, same-sex marriage had become legal in states that contained more than 70% of the United States population. In some jurisdictions legalization came through the action of state courts or the enactment of state legislation. More frequently it came as the result of the decisions of federal courts. On November 6, 2012, Maine, Maryland, and Washington became the first states to legalize same-sex marriage through popular vote. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in the District of Columbia and 21 Native American tribal nations as well.
The June 2013 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor striking down the law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage gave significant impetus to the progress of lawsuits that challenged state bans on same-sex marriage in federal court. Since that decision, with only a few exceptions, U.S. District Courts and Courts of Appeals have found state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, as have several state courts. The exceptions have been a state court in Tennessee, U.S. district courts in Louisiana and Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from that circuit's decision.
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses in the case Obergefell v. Hodges.
Early years Historical documents do record numerous examples of same-sex couples living in relationships that functioned as marriages even if they could not be legally sanctified as such."The improbable, 200-year-old story of one of America’s first same-sex ‘marriages’" . Washington Post, March 20, 2015. Historian Rachel Hope Cleves documents one such relationship, that of 19th-century Vermont residents Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, in her 2014 book Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.
Same-sex marriage was, however, rarely mentioned or recognized as a political issue before the 1970s. In August 1953, officials of the U.S Post Office delayed delivery of that month's issue of ONE magazine, with the cover story "Homosexual Marriage?", for three weeks while they tried to determine whether its contents were obscene. Few mentions of the subject have been documented in the decades that followed. In June 1971, members of the Gay Activists Alliance demanded marriage rights for same-sex couples at New York City's Marriage License Bureau.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in October 1971 that Minnesota's laws prohibiting marriages between same-sex partners did not violate the federal constitution. In October 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case, Baker v. Nelson, "for want of a substantial federal question." Baker set federal precedent that blocked federal courts from ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage for decades. The next year, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations called for the repeal of all statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples and for extending the legal benefits of marriage to all cohabiting couples.
Several states enacted bans on same-sex marriage in the late 1970s as well, including Virginia in 1975, and Florida, California, and Wyoming in 1977.
Activist debate
In the late 1980s, activists debated whether marriage rights should be at the forefront of the broader campaign for LGBT equality. Some of the oldest groups saw marriage as a contradiction of the radical origins of the gay rights movement in the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s. Others raised the tactical objection that a step-by step campaign that focused on near-term potential victories like anti-discrimination statutes stood a greater chance of long term success. In 1989, as a contribution to this debate, Andrew Sullivan's essay "Here Comes the Groom: A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage" appeared in The New Republic. In late 1993, Bruce Bawer in A Place at the Table contended using traditional moral arguments that same-sex relationships merit legal and religious recognition as marriages. He identified himself as part of a "silent majority" of non-radicals unrepresented in media depictions of gay and lesbian life and criticized the gay community for identifying homosexuality with sexual behavior.
The issue of marriage had enough appeal within the gay and lesbian community that in April 1993, as part of the demonstrations surrounding the gay rights march in Washington, D.C., about 1,500 same-sex couples staged a mass wedding ceremony with "a dozen ministers, organ music, photographers and rice" at the National Museum of Natural History to call for marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
Hawaii and reaction The Hawaii case of Baehr v. Miike attracted national attention when the Hawaii Supreme Court on May 5, 1993, ordered a trial court to consider whether the state could demonstrate that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples "furthers compelling state interests and is narrowly drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgments of constitutional rights."Baehr v. Lewin , 74 Haw. 530, 852 P.2d 44 (1993), reconsideration and clarification granted in part, 74 Haw. 645, 852 P.2d 74 (1993)
Congressional reaction to that ruling, partly in anticipation of the approaching presidential election, resulted in the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages. President Bill Clinton signed it into law on September 21, 1996. In November 1998, Hawaii voters approved a state constitutional amendment allowing their legislature to ban same-sex marriage, and Alaska voters approved a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Lawrence v. Texas
In parallel with the campaign for same-sex marriage, LGBT civil rights gained legal recognition. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' "Homosexual Conduct" law in Lawrence v. Texas. The ruling rendered same-sex sodomy laws in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri and broader sodomy laws in nine other states unenforceable. Baker v. Vermont
In 1999, the Supreme Court of Vermont ruled that denying the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples was against the state constitution.Baker v Vermont
Massachusetts and reactions On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples violated the Massachusetts Constitution. Massachusetts became the first United States jurisdiction to license and recognize same-sex marriages beginning May 17, 2004 after Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote the majority opinion in the court ruling.
In February and March 2004, city officials in San Francisco issued marriage licenses to about 4000 same-sex couples before being ordered to stop by the California Supreme Court. On February 20, 2004, the clerk in Sandoval County, New Mexico, issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples for a day until the state attorney general issued an opinion that they were "invalid under state law". Similar actions occurred in New Paltz, New York (February 27); Multnomah County, Oregon (March 3); and Asbury Park, New Jersey (March 8).
On August 4, 2004, a Washington court ruled for the plaintiffs in a suit challenging that state's defense of marriage act. King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing became the first trial judge in the nation to rule that a state law prohibiting same-sex marriages, or DOMA, was unconstitutional, a finding for the plaintiffs in an opinion hailed as poetic and controversial. The trial court ruling in Andersen v. King County was narrowly overturned by the Washington Supreme Court in 2006.
On November 2, 2004, voters in eleven states—Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah—approved state constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Kansas did so on April 5, 2005, as did Texas voters on November 8 of that year.
The adverse reactions continued in 2006. Alabama voters approved a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman on June 6. Voters in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin adopted similar amendments on election day, November 7. The only exception that day was Arizona, where voters rejected an initiative banning the recognition same-sex marriages and civil unions.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger twice vetoed legislation that would have made same-sex marriage legal there, in September 2005 and October 2007.
2008 Decision and reversal in California On May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court of California issued a decision that legalized same-sex marriage in California, holding that California's existing opposite-sex definition of marriage violated the constitutional rights of same-sex couples. To overturn the decision, opponents of same-sex marriage placed a state constitutional amendment on the November ballot. Known as Proposition 8, it passed in November 2008, ending the licensing and recognition of same-sex marriages in California after less than six months.
In two more states, Arizona and Florida, voters approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Court ruling: Connecticut