White House updates Facebook profile image to reflect Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage

The White House has updated its Facebook profile
image to reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling that
legalizes same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
In a landmark opinion, the Supreme Court ruled Friday
that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, establishing
a new civil right and handing gay rights advocates a
victory that until very recently would have seemed
unthinkable.
The 5-4 ruling had Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for
the majority with the four liberal justices. Each of the
four conservative justices wrote their own dissent.
The far-reaching decision settles one of the major civil
rights fights of this era — one that has rapidly evolved in
the minds of the American pubic and its leaders,
including President Barack Obama. He struggled
publicly with the issue and ultimately embraced same-
sex marriage in the months before his 2012 re-election.
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it
embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion,
sacrifice and family,” Kennedy wrote. “In forming a
marital union, two people become something greater
than they once were.”
In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia blasted the Court’s
“threat to American democracy.”
“The substance of today’s decree is not of immense
personal importance to me,” he wrote. “But what really
astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial
Putsch.”
The relevant cases were argued earlier this year.
Attorney John Bursch, serving as Michigan’s Special
Assistant Attorney General, defended four states’ bans
on gay marriage before the Court, arguing that the case
was not about how to define marriage, but rather about
who gets to decide the question.
The case came before the Supreme Court after several
lower courts overturned state bans on gay marriage. A
federal appeals court had previously ruled in favor of
the state bans, with Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth
Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals writing a majority opinion
in line with the rationale that the issue should be
decided through the political process, not the courts.
Fourteen couples and two widowers challenged the
bans. Attorneys Mary Bonauto and Doug Hallward-
Driemeier presented their case before the Court, arguing
that the freedom to marry is a fundamental right for all
people and should not be left to popular vote.
Three years after President Barack Obama first voiced
his support for gay couples’ right to marry, his
administration supported the same sex couples at the
Supreme Court.
“Gay and lesbian people are equal,” Solicitor General
Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the justices at the oral
arguments earlier this year. “It is simply untenable —
untenable — to suggest that they can be denied the right
of equal participation in an institution of marriage, or
that they can be required to wait until the majority
decides that it is ready to treat gay and lesbian people
as equals.
The same-sex couples who challenged gay marriage
bans in Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio were
just a few of the estimated 650,000 same-sex couples in
the United States, 125,000 of whom are raising children.
The challenges included same-sex couples who wanted
to marry, those who sought to have their lawful out-of-
state marriage recognized, as well as those who wanted
to amend a birth or death certificate with their marriage
status.
The lead plaintiff in the case is Jim Obergefell who
married his spouse John Arthur in 2013 months before
Arthur died.
The couple, who lived in Ohio, had to travel to Maryland
aboard a medical jet to get married when Arthur
became gravely ill. And when Arthur died, Obergefell
began to fight to be recognized as Arthur’s spouse on
his death certificate.
The plaintiffs from Michigan are April DeBoer and
Jayne Rowse, two Detroit-area nurses who are also
foster parents. They took to the courts after they took in
four special-needs newborns who were either
abandoned or surrendered at birth, but could not jointly
adopt the children because Michigan’s adoption code
requires that couples be married to adopt.
Sgt. Ijpe Dekoe and Thomas Kostura became plaintiffs
in the gay marriage case after they moved to
Tennessee from New York.
The pair had married in New York in 2011, but Dekoe’s
position in the Army took the couple to Tennessee,
which banned gay marriage and refused to recognize
gay marriages performed in other states.