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UK Wedding News

27/06/2013

US Gay Marriage Ban Overturned

The Supreme Court in America has overturned a law defining marriage as that between a man and a woman only.

The court said the Defense of Marriage Act, better known as DOMA, denied equal protection to same-sex couples.

On Wednesday, the ruling was struck down in a 5 to 4 vote.

Currently, 12 US states as well as the District of Columbia recognise gay marriage, while more than 30 states ban it. The Supreme Court's landmark ruling now means that legally married gay men and women are entitled to claim the same federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples.

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On Wednesday's ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: "Doma writes inequality into the entire United States Code.

"Under Doma, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways.

"Doma's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal."

However, the challenge to Doma did not address the question of whether same-sex marriage is constitutional.

In addition, the court also declined to rule on a ban relating to same-sex marriage in California, known as Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 is a ban on gay marriage passed by California voters in November 2008, just months after the state's supreme court decided gay marriage was legal. In the five months that same-sex marriages were allowed, around 18,000 couples were married. Those opposed to the measure said the law was "unconstitutional" because it took away previously granted rights from gay and lesbian couples.

DOMA was signed into law in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton after it was approved in Congress.

(JP/CD)

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"The Supreme Court in America has overturned a law defining marriage as that between a man and a woman only."