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- Sixty-four percent of Americans now live in a state where gay people will soon be able to marry.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6 This week of daycare heroin, teenaged Nobel Prize winners, and fatal Ebola in the U.S. kicked off in Washington D.C., where the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to lower-court rulings overturning bans on same-sex marriage, thus clearing the path for full marriage equality in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and six other states covered by the circuit courts whose rulings the Supremes allowed to stand. “It will not be lost on anyone that the Supreme Court of the United States, thought to be conservative over all, has allowed rulings to stand that continue to spread equality for gays and lesbians in this country,” wrote Richard Socarides for The New Yorker. “[Today] was the biggest day for marriage equality yet in the history of this crusade.” Tomorrow, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will issue its own pro-marriage equality mandate, bringing marriage equality to Nevada and Idaho and paving the way for the same in Montana, Arizona, and Alaska. “[Tuesday’s] decision from the Ninth Circuit brings to 35 the number of freedom to marry states, and 64% of the American people now live in a state where gay people will soon share in the freedom to marry,” said Freedom to Marry founder and president Evan Wolfson. “We now have more states that have ended the exclusion of gay couples from marriage than had ended bans on interracial marriage when the Supreme Court brought the country to national resolution in Loving v. Virginia.” Congratulations to America and all its forthcoming newlyweds.
