In 1970, two male student activists were denied a marriage license in the state of Minnesota. As a result, they “sued in the state court, claiming that to deny the marriage license would violate their Constitutional rights.” Thus began the long judicial history of same-sex marriage , as well as the conversation about the interpretation of
Constitutional rights that runs parallel with it. This history has most recently culminated in the Obergefell v Hodges case, in which the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the entire nation. This paper begins with a brief glimpse at the history of the topic of same-sex marriage in the United States. The paper will then focus on the case of Obergefell v Hodges, and will specifically analyze the contentious role of the interpretation of the Constitution involved in the final decision. Cleary the Supreme Court, an extremely high authority in the United States, found that that the nationalizing of same-sex marriage was constitutional. However there were dissenting opinions that opposed the decision on the grounds that the Constitution specified that such rights were up to the state legislature. Lastly, …show more content…
Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association labeled homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality in the case of Lawrence v Texas by “a 6-3 majority authored by Kennedy, who would later play a leading role in Obergefell v Hodges. The decriminalization of homosexuality was brought about because of the violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Lawrence v Texas, and also because Bowers v Hardwick was overturned due to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Clearly the U.S. Constitution has played a crucial role in the judicial decisions in regards to the progressing legality of