The Supreme Court has vacated Washington for its summer recess, but not before turning the time-honored definition of marriage on its head.
Five members of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) fired the final shot, with a slim 5 to 4 majority in a case known as Obergefell vs. Hodges.
They ruled that the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 primarily to grant equality to newly freed slaves after the Civil War, also requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same gender.
The handwriting for such a ruling has been on the wall since Massachusetts became the first state to confer such a right in 2003. Thirty-five states followed suit, while the 13 states that barred such marriages faced an ongoing barrage of legal challenges, all the while losing ground in the court of public opinion.
A Pew Research Poll published in the second week of June showed 57% of Americans favoring same-gender marriage, with just 39% opposed. Some 72% said that legalization was “inevitable.”
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