Title: Reading: Sexual Orientation | Sociology
Headings: 
Reading: Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Practice

Content: In 1996, The Defense of Marriage Act ( DOMA) was passed, explicitly limiting the definition of “marriage” to a union between one man and one woman. It also allowed individual states to choose whether or not they recognized same-sex marriages performed in other states. Imagine that you married an opposite-sex partner under similar conditions—if you went on a cross-country vacation the validity of your marriage would change every time you crossed state lines. In another blow to same-sex marriage advocates, in November 2008 California passed Proposition 8, a state law that limited marriage to unions of opposite-sex partners. Over time, advocates for same-sex marriage won several court cases, laying the groundwork for legalized same-sex marriage across the United States, including the June 2013 decision to overturn part of DOMA in Windsor v. United States, and the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Hollingsworth v. Perry, affirming the August 2010 ruling that found California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide on June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The court ruled that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the refusal to recognize those marriages performed in other jurisdictions violated the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. YouTube
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