The Supreme Court delivered a historic victory, ruling 5 to 4 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live and that states may no longer reserve the right only for heterosexual couples.
“Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
President Barack Obama welcomed the Supreme Court decision to give same-sex couples the right to marry. In a speech in the Rose Garden, Obama called the ruling justice "with a thunderbolt." The president acknowledged that many Americans have religious objections to the high-court decision. "Today should also give us hope that the many issues we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible," he said. The president said the ruling was the result of small acts of courage by ordinary Americans that made the country realize that "love is love."