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- 1999- Antisodomy laws of 32 states were repealed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:
“The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Decency ... must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“And about her courts were seen
Liveried angels robed in green,
Wearing, by St Patrick’s bounty,
Emeralds big as half the county.”
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)