I woke up like any typical Friday morning. My dad got me out of bed because he doesn’t believe in sleeping in and we had our morning coffee and walked the dog. As I checked Twitter afterwards, my timeline exploded with excited tweets that said the United States Supreme Court had declared same-sex marriage legal nationwide in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. They were calling it our generation’s Brown v. Board of Education. I couldn’t help but get a little emotional watching the events unfold because these types of landmark cases are generational, and there’s no guarantee I’ll witness something like this again. Also, an interview with a gay couple who said that they finally feel “normal” really tugged at my heart strings.
This ruling is a strong indication of how far we have come as a country. It was just in the 1950’s and 60’s that legal courts would argue whether or not being gay was a crime. Now in 2015, to see the highest court in the land declare that same-sex couples have the right to get married in any of America’s fifty beautiful states (and have it be recognized in all of those fifty states), it is truly a historic moment--a moment that will be written about in school textbooks and studied in law schools throughout the country.
Little by little, many efforts have been made to get here. One man from Ohio’s case just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. James Obergefell was denied the right to put his name on his late husband’s death certificate because the state of Ohio (which banned same-sex before today) would not legally recognize the marriage they had done in Maryland. That’s it. The mere denial to a man who simply just wanted his name on a document sparked what I think will be the most defining civil rights case of Generation Y’s lifetime.
As I watched the news coverage on TV, my Dad asked me why I was so happy and so supportive of the decision (he and I will probably continue to agree to disagree on this issue until the day we both die). I told him that “This is what we have been working towards. The hard work finally paid off.” He glared at me and said, “Who is this we? It’s not like you’re one of them. It’s not like you’re gay and trying to marry someone.” I couldn’t help but laugh a little as I told him, “There has never been a them. There has always only been a we. We are all Americans. We all deserve to be treated equally under the law. And we all deserve the right to marry who we love.”
We let love win.
