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The history of same-sex marriage in the United States dates from the early 1970s, when the first lawsuits seeking legal recognition of same-sex relationships brought the question of civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples to public attention though they proved unsuccessful. The subject became increasingly prominent in U.S. politics following the 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in ''Baehr v. Lewin'' that suggested the possibility that the state's prohibition might be unconstitutional. That decision was met by actions at both the federal and state level to restrict marriage to male-female couples, notably the enactment at the federal level of the Defense of Marriage Act. On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision in ''Goodridge v. Department of Public Health'' six months earlier. Just as with the Hawaii decision, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts provoked a reaction from opponents of same-sex marriage that resulted in further legal restrictions being written into state statutes and constitutions. The movement to obtain marriage rights for same-sex couples expanded steadily from that time until in late 2014 lawsuits had been brought in every state that still denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. By late 2014, same-sex marriage had become legal in states that contained more than 70% of the United States population. More than 70% of Americans lived in a jurisdiction where same-sex couples could legally marry.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population.html )〕 In some jurisdictions legalization came through the action of state courts or the enactment of state legislation. More frequently it came as the result of the decisions of federal courts. On November 6, 2012, Maine, Maryland, and Washington became the first states to legalize same-sex marriage through popular vote. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in the District of Columbia and 21 Native American tribal jurisdictions as well. The June 2013 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in ''United States v. Windsor'' striking down the law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage gave significant impetus to the progress of lawsuits that challenged state bans on same-sex marriage in federal court. Since that decision, with only a few exceptions, U.S. District Courts and Courts of Appeals have found state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, as have several state courts. The exceptions have been a state court in Tennessee, U.S. district courts in Louisiana and Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals from that circuit's decision. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses in the case ''Obergefell v. Hodges''. ==Early years== Historical documents do record numerous examples of same-sex couples living in relationships that functioned as marriages even if they could not be legally sanctified as such.〔("The improbable, 200-year-old story of one of America’s first same-sex ‘marriages’" ). ''Washington Post'', March 20, 2015.〕 Historian Rachel Hope Cleves documents one such relationship, that of 19th-century Vermont residents Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, in her 2014 book ''Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America''.〔 As early as the 16th century, explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote of encountering a common custom of "one man married to another" in communities along the Gulf Coast,〔 several newspaper stories from the 18th and 19th centuries speak of "female husbands" who were married to other women,〔 and historian Susan Lee Johnson included the story of Jason Chamberlain and John Chaffee, a couple who were together for over 50 years until Chaffee's death in 1903, in her 2000 book ''Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush''.〔("Gold Rush Gays" ). ''The Bay Area Reporter'', November 20, 2014.〕 Same-sex marriage was, however, rarely mentioned or recognized as a political issue before the 1970s. In August 1953, officials of the U.S Post Office delayed delivery of that month's issue of ''ONE'' magazine, with the cover story "Homosexual Marriage?", for three weeks while they tried to determine whether its contents were obscene. Few mentions of the subject have been documented in the decades that followed. In June 1971, members of the Gay Activists Alliance demanded marriage rights for same-sex couples at New York City’s Marriage License Bureau. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in October 1971 that Minnesota's laws prohibiting marriages between same-sex partners did not violate the federal constitution. In October 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case, ''Baker v. Nelson'', "for want of a substantial federal question." ''Baker'' set federal precedent that blocked federal courts from ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage for decades. The next year, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations called for the repeal of all statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples and for extending the legal benefits of marriage to all cohabiting couples. In 1972, after Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment ERA, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women, and it went to the states for ratification, opponents including Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Freund contended that the ERA would invalidate state laws denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In response, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, principal sponsor of the ERA, defended it against such an interpretation: "All it says is that if a state legislature makes a judgment that it is wrong for a man to marry a man, then it must say that it is wrong for a woman to marry a woman". The dispute attracted some discussion in legal circles. The next year, the ''Yale Law Journal'' published an unsigned article, "The Legality of Homosexual Marriage", which argued that "() credible case can be made that the denial of marriage licenses to all homosexual couples violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" and that the proposed Equal Rights Amendment would make such a claim irrefutable. In May 1974, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which had been founded in 1970, aired an installment of its one-hour debate series ''The Advocates'' that considers the question "Should Marriage Between Homosexuals Be Permitted?". Participants included longtime activists Frank Kameny, Elaine Noble, and Charles Socarides. As late as March 1980, when the ERA's prospects had dimmed, the LDS Church opposed the ERA because it "could extend legal protection to same-sex lesbian and homosexual marriages", citing the arguments made recently by Paul A. Freund of Harvard Law School before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Several states enacted bans on same-sex marriage in the late 1970s as well, including Virginia in 1975, and Florida, California, and Wyoming in 1977. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of same-sex marriage in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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