Historic Year for Marriage Equality

Above is a celebratory video from the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER)—the people who got California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 struck down, enabling marriage equality to return to the USA’s most populous state. It reviews the good news AFER was part of in 2013—and 2013 was full of good news.

The ruling on Prop 8 was announced the same day that Section 3 of the infamous Defense [sic] of Marriage Act (DOMA) was struck down, but AFER wasn’t part of that suit, so it’s not mentioned in this video. What is in this video, though is a clear promise: AFER will keep at it until all 50 US states have marriage equality.

When I wrote about the end of Prop 8 and Section 3 of DOMA back in June, I said that I thought that full, nationwide marriage equality “could be decades from now.” Now, I’m not so sure.

Yesterday, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of marriage equality. Today, a federal judge struck down Utah’s marriage equality ban—Utah! The fast pace is continuing, and even though the dust in those two states is far from settled, they’re hardly the last states where full freedom and justice will be won. In fact, the evidence is that if anything the pace of change will remain fast.

So, it may not take decades for full marriage equality throughout the USA. Maybe just one—or less.

Here in New Zealand, Parliament approved marriage equality on April 17. The new law took effect on Monday, August 19. I talked a lot about the fight for marriage equality in New Zealand; those posts are tagged “NZ Marriage Equality”.

Of course, 2013 was the year that Nigel and I got married, and naturally I blogged about that, too. My native Illinois finally passed marriage equality this year, too, and the Governor, Pat Quinn, signed the bill into law in November. Now, when we go to visit family and friends in Illinois, Nigel and I will still be married when we get there. That’s the sort of thing that heterosexuals never have to think about, but it’s important.

So, all around, this was an outstanding year for marriage equality—even better than last year, which was a great year. The future is even brighter.