Long struggle, quick endgame as same-sex marriage prevails
"In that climate, it sounded ambitious and bold, but it rallied a critical mass of leaders to believe maybe it was attainable," said Evan Wolfson, president of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry that played a key role in developing the campaign's strategies.
"The progress that followed built on victories in legislatures, victories in courts, and on the growing public consensus that there is no good reason to treat LGBT people as second-class citizens," he said in an email Saturday.
President Barack Obama, who endorsed gay marriage in 2012, paid tribute to the persistence of its supporters in his remarks Friday hailing the Supreme Court decision.
"[...] the Supreme Court affirmed the question we raised 44 years ago," McConnell said in an email Saturday.
Hawaii lawmakers voted in 1994 to limit marriage to unions between a man and woman, and in September 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages and said no state could be forced to recognize such marriages that might become legal in another state.
[...] the judge suspended his ruling the next day to allow an appeal, and in 1998 it was rendered moot when Hawaii voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment empowering state legislators to limit marriage to heterosexual unions.
"When I graduated from high school in 1986, a very different Supreme Court decision (upholding state anti-sodomy laws) sent me a very different message: lesbians and gay men were outlaws, and unworthy," Byard said.
"How did we reach a point where an institution older than recorded history could be redefined and altered by an idea unknown before the year 2000?" asked Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.