Us supreme court same sex marriage

The United States has witnessed a remarkable shift in LGBTQ rights and visibility in the 50 years since the Stonewall uprising — and in just the last few years, LGBTQ people have won the right to marry, have hit a record high in representation on television and have seen the first openly gay major presidential candidate begin his campaign. And just as advocates fought their battle American culture, they also did so in the courts, including the U. Supreme Court. Over the last half a century, the court first denied and then affirmed that LGBTQ people have the right to consensual sex, and then the right to marry whom they choose.

Since then, the highest federal court in the country has weighed-in on about a dozen other LGBT rights—related cases, which have had powerful impacts on the gay rights movement. SCOTUS's first gay rights case focused on the First Amendment—specifically, how the rights of free speech and press apply to homosexual content. In , Los Angeles' postmaster Otto Olesen ordered federal postal authorities to seize ONE , a homosexual magazine the nation's first , arguing that the magazine's content was "obscene. One, Inc.

Same-sex marriage in the United States expanded from one state in to all fifty states in through various state court rulings, state legislation, direct popular votes, and federal court rulings. Same-sex marriage is also referred to as gay marriage , while the political status in which the marriages of same-sex couples and the marriages of opposite-sex couples are recognized as equal by the law is referred to as marriage equality. The fifty states each have separate marriage laws , which must adhere to rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States that recognize marriage as a fundamental right that is guaranteed by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , as first established in the landmark civil rights case of Loving v. Civil rights campaigning in support of marriage without distinction as to sex or sexual orientation began in the s.

Obergefell v. Hodges , legal case in which the U. Supreme Court ruled 5—4 on June 26, , that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.