LGBT Rights and State Courts
- 1992- Colorado became the first state to abolish offered civil-rights protection for homosexuals by amending its constitution
- 1998- Maine became the first state to repeal its existing gay-rights statutes
- 1999- Vermont Supreme Court grants the same rights and protections that married heterosexuals have to homosexual partners.
- 1999- Antisodomy laws of 32 states were repealed
- 1999- 11 states had laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination
- 2000- Vermont Supreme Court backed civil unions between homosexual couples
- 2003- Massachusetts Highest Court rules that homosexuals do have the right to marry according to the constitution.
- 2003- Antisodomy Laws in all states were overturned.
- May 2004- Massachusetts begins issuing licenses for same sex marriages
- 2006- New Jersey’s Supreme Court extends civil rights to homosexuals and allows civil unions
- 2008- California and Connecticut Supreme Courts abolished their states’ bans on same-sex marriages
- 2009 - Iowa Supreme Court unanimously legalized same-sex marriage in Varnum v. Brien
Read more about this topic: LGBT Movements In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words rights, state and/or courts:
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church, and on the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end of the Union to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the U.S. for instance, the value of a homemaker’s productive work has been imputed mostly when she was maimed or killed and insurance companies and/or the courts had to calculate the amount to pay her family in damages. Even at that, the rates were mostly pink collar and the big number was attributed to the husband’s pain and suffering.”
—Gloria Steinem (20th century)