The US Supreme Court gave married gay couples equal federal standing with all other married Americans and cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California, the most populous state.
It was not a sweeping ruling to allow same-sex couples to marry anywhere, but gay rights advocates quickly said they would be back in court soon to pursue that goal.
Wednesday’s landmark rulings, both by narrow 5-4 majorities, sidestepped the larger question of whether banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, leaving in place a nationwide patchwork of laws that outlaw same-sex unions in roughly three dozen states.
However, they did signal the rapid shift across the US toward acceptance of gay marriage; most polls now show majority support for the right of gays to marry.
“This was discrimination enshrined in law,” US President Barack Obama said after the rulings. “We are a people who declared that we are all created equal — and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
The court invalidated a part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman and denied married gay couples a range of tax, health and retirement benefits.
Obama decided in 2011 that the federal government would stop defending the 1996 law, concluding that it was legally indefensible.
US Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by the four liberal justices, said the purpose of the law was to impose a disadvantage and “a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the states.”
The federal government quickly shifted on Wednesday toward complying with the new reality. US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon would begin the process to extend benefits to the same-sex spouses of military members as soon as possible.
US defense officials estimate there are 18,000 same-sex couples in the military, but it is unclear how many are married.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano pledged in a statement to extend immigration benefits to gay married couples. That means that US citizens or permanent residents with foreign spouses would be able to sponsor their partners for US residency, like straight married Americans can.
The Supreme Court also left in place a lower court’s ruling striking down California’s ban on gay marriage. California Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered that marriage licenses be issued to gay couples as soon as a federal appeals court allows it.
The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said it would wait at least 25 days before allowing gay marriages to resume in California.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not