Page 2 - Cannot Ban News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Gay. april 26th, 2000, vermont becomes the first state to legalize civil unions between same-sex couples. and four years later, on may 17, 2004, the first legal same-sex marriage in the country takes place in massachusetts. in 2015, the fight for marriage equality makes it all the way to the u.s. supreme court. and on june 26th, the justices hand down a landmark verdict. >> the ruling today that same-sex marriage is a nationwide constitutional right, this is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our time. >> reporter: the 5-4 decision makes marriage equality the law of the land with the u...

Looking for? will it be the so-called swing vote of justice kennedy? is it going to be argument made around 194th amendment? what are you -- the 14th amendment? what are you looking for? >> it's like a broken record, but in all of the high-profile cases we're watching justice anthony kennedy closely. that's going to be the case on tuesday. he's been the author of the last couple of major gay rights decisions. and we can say the former liberal justices will be on board to hold that states cannot ban same-sex marriage. so we're really going to be watching justice anthony kennedy. you know two ye...

It is a great day for america. our plaintiffs now get to go back to california and together with every other citizen of california marry the person they love. >> i truly believe that every vote counts. we feel today that the supreme court's decision invalidates those votes of 10 million people that came out to say they believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. >> two big rulings by the u.s. supreme court, both of them 5-4, both of them causing gay rights advocates and supporters to celebrate tonight because they were big wins. first on prop 8, this is the california law, statute vote...

Contributing editor u.s. news and world report, syndicated columnist, charles krauthammer. steve, these are two big wins for gay rights advocates tonight. >> there's no question. the doma ruling in particular is the bigger of two wins, in part because of the way justice kennedy laid out his argument, which seems to set up further court battles in the future in which proponents of gay marriage will basically say this is unconstitutional because we think the states cannot ban gay marriage any longer. you saw from justice scalia -- i thought justice kennedy's reasoning, it felt as you read his op...

Will inevitably lead to overturning of all of the laws in all the states that disallow gay marriage, and it is in the rationale of the kennedy opinion. the kennedy opinion that says that the states are sovereign on the issue of marriage and thus the federal government cannot impose its definition on the states. if kennedy had stopped with that, it would have been a conservative decision, it would have been essentially a way of saying status quo prevails, those states that allow it will allow it, those will do otherwise. but he had a second rationale, federalist. the second rationale was the re...