The Supreme Court on Friday Struck down
state bans on gay marriage.
In the 5-4 decision written by Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy, the high court said that the U.S. Constitution
guarantees gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.
Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to
Marry, praised the ruling in a written statement.
“Today’s ruling is a transformative
triumph decades in the making, a momentous victory for freedom,
equality, inclusion, and above all, love. For anyone who ever doubted
that we could bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice,
today the United States again took a giant step toward the more
perfect union we the people aspire to” Wolfson said. “Today the
Liberty Bell rings alongside wedding bells across an ocean of joy.”
“With the ruling in Obergefell v.
Hodges, the justices affirmed what a super-majority of Americans
had come to understand: the freedom to marry is a precious,
fundamental right that belongs to all, and that same-sex couples and
our families share the same dreams and needs as any others.”
The ruling comes in a case challenging
bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.
An appellate court had ruled in favor
of the states, whose lawyers argued that the issue should be decided
by the people, rather than by judges. Plaintiffs appealed to the
Supreme Court.