The History of Same Sex Marriage

The history of same sex marriage in the US is fairly short. However, civil unions have existed in some form or another since medieval Europe-for roughly 600 years. Of course, there's a major difference between a civil union and a marriage, and this is where the territory gets sticky. The following is a brief overview of the history of same sex marriage in the United States.

Same sex marriage vaulted to the country's attention during 1993 Hawaii court case Baehr v. Lewin, in which judges ruled that the state would need to give a concrete or compelling argument or reason for why gays should not have the same legal right to marry as heterosexual couples. It was this event that sparked the creation and passage of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the first act to directly mention same sex marriage and law. The Act said that for the purposes of federal law, marriage was only possible for one man and one woman.

Though the Defense of Marriage Act stalled the fight for same sex marriage, the issue reared its head again a few years later. In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state needed to give the legal benefits of marriage so same sex couples. A year later, Vermont legislature created civil unions in an attempt to give same sex couples equal rights to heterosexual couples.

In 2003, a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling said that gays had the same marriage rights as heterosexuals. A year later, the Court ruled that civil unions would not fulfill this earlier decision. It was on May 17, 2004 that Massachusetts became the first state in the union to approve same sex marriage. Connecticut soon approved gay marriage, and in 2008, California followed suit. However, in November of 2008, this was reversed with the passage of Proposition 8: the issue is still playing out in the courts.

Though ten other states have given homosexual couples equal rights, whether through civil unions or same sex marriages, 27 states have passed laws or acts to ban gay marriage.