The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. The act's provisions were ruled unconstitutional or left effectively unenforceable by Supreme Court decisions in the cases of United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
In the United States, the availability of legally recognized same-sex marriage expanded from one state in 2004 to all fifty states in 2015 through various state and federal court rulings, state legislation, and direct popular votes. 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 1967 landmark civil rights case of Loving v. Virginia.
Freedom to Marry was the national bipartisan organization dedicated to winning marriage for same-sex couples in the United States. Freedom to Marry was founded in New York City in 2003 by Evan Wolfson. Wolfson served as president of the organization through the June 2015 victory at the Supreme Court, until the organization's official closing in February 2016.
Elena Kagan is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010 and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the fourth woman to become a member of the Court.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United States have evolved significantly over time. Prior to 1962, all 50 states criminalized same-sex sexual activity, but by 2015, LGBT Americans had won the right to marry nationwide. Additionally, in many states and municipalities, LGBT Americans are legally protected from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to public accommodations, though LGBT Americans still lack comprehensive legal protections from discrimination at the Federal level.
Same-sex marriage has been legally recognized in the U.S. state of Maryland since January 1, 2013. In 2012, the state's Democratic representatives, led by Governor Martin O'Malley, began a campaign for its legalization. After much debate, a law permitting same-sex marriage was passed by the General Assembly in February 2012 and signed on March 1, 2012. The law took effect on January 1, 2013 after 52.4% of voters approved a statewide referendum held on November 6, 2012. The vote was hailed as a watershed moment by gay rights activists and marked the first time marriage rights in the United States have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.
Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage; it passed in the November 2008 California state elections and was later overturned in court. The proposition was created by opponents of same-sex marriage in advance of the California Supreme Court's May 2008 appeal ruling, In re Marriage Cases, which followed the short-lived 2004 same-sex weddings controversy and found the previous ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Proposition 8 was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 2010, although the court decision did not go into effect until June 26, 2013, following the conclusion of proponents' appeals.
Eric Himpton Holder Jr. is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States from 2009 to 2015. Holder, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama, was the first African American to hold the position of U.S. Attorney General.
James David Manning is an American pastor at the ATLAH World Missionary Church. Manning grew up in Red Springs, North Carolina, and has been with ATLAH since 1981. ATLAH stands for All The Land Anointed Holy, which is Manning's name for Harlem.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is an American non-profit political organization established to work against the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. It was formed in 2007 specifically to pass California Proposition 8, a state prohibition of same-sex marriage. The group has opposed civil union legislation and gay adoption, and has fought against allowing transgender individuals to use bathrooms that accord with their gender identity. Brian S. Brown has served as the group's president since 2010.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.
Timothy Seymour Black is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case concerning same-sex marriage. The Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
LGBT history in the United States spans the contributions and struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals as well as the coalitions they've built. States like California, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, and Illinois have public school curricula that legally require LGBT history lessons, including prominent gay people and LGBT-rights milestones, in history classes.
Question 6 is a referendum that appeared on the general election ballot for the U.S. state of Maryland to allow voters to approve or reject the Civil Marriage Protection Act—a bill legalizing same-sex marriage passed by the General Assembly in 2012. The referendum was approved by 52.4% of voters on November 6, 2012 and thereafter went into effect on January 1, 2013.
This page contains a timeline of significant events regarding same-sex marriage in the United States. On June 26, 2015, the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges effectively ended restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), is a landmark civil rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 5–4 ruling requires all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the Insular Areas to perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples, with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities.
Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case in the Supreme Court of the United States that dealt with whether owners of public accommodations can refuse certain services based on the First Amendment claims of free speech and free exercise of religion, and therefore be granted an exemption from laws ensuring non-discrimination in public accommodations — in particular, by refusing to provide creative services, such as making a custom wedding cake for the marriage of a gay couple, on the basis of the owner's religious beliefs.
The African-American LGBT community is part of the overall LGBT culture and overall African-American culture. LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer. The LGBT community did not receive societal recognition until the historical marking of the Stonewall Riots in 1969 in New York at Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall riots brought domestic and global attention to the lesbian and gay community. Preceding Stonewall, Romer v. Evans vastly impacted the trajectory of the LGBT community. Ruling in favor of Romer, Justice Kennedy asserted in the case commentary that Colorado's state constitutional amendment denying LGBT people protection from discrimination "bore no purpose other than to burden LGB persons".
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of African ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Africa, the Americas and Europe and in the global African diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.
