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Wow, America -- today love wins! Just moments ago the Supreme Court ruled in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Gay marriage is officially legal in the U.S.A.
The SCOTUS ruling in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges case makes bans on gay marriage illegal. In the majority opinion the justices wrote:
The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a character protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.
I am grateful for the justices' ability to envision what liberty looks like in this modern age.
This law has special significance to me. Three years ago, almost to the date, my husband and I parted after 16 years of marriage because he is gay. It was a difficult, heartbreaking decision. But we knew we were both living diminished lives as a married couple, and that greater fulfillment awaited if we dared step across the threshold.
My ex-husband came of age just after the era of AIDS, in a time when homosexuality spelled loneliness and disenfranchisement. He tried his best to live as a straight husband because he saw that as his only path to happiness, acceptance, and a family.
But the past decade or so has hurled us through a phenomenal cultural shift. We are living in an age of more possibilities.
Over the years I have seen my gay friends marry and start families. I see how happy this makes them, what it means to live with the legal security and public sanction of a real marriage. I see the way love weaves strong bonds among these couples and their beautiful children.
I don't know if my ex-husband will ever marry again. But it makes me tremendously happy to know that if he does, he will be able to choose a husband this time.
From Justice Anthony Kennedy (h/t Slate):
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Image via Muskoka Stock Photos/Shutterstock
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