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In the United States of America, same-sex marriage has been legal nationwide since June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in ''Obergefell v. Hodges'' that state-level bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=U.S. 21st country to allow same-sex marriage nationwide )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf )〕 The court ruled that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the refusal to recognize those marriages performed in other jurisdictions violates the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The ruling overturned a precedent, ''Baker v. Nelson''. While civil rights campaigning took place from the 1970s, the issue became prominent from around 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition was unconstitutional. The ruling led to federal actions and actions by several states, to restrict marriage to male-female couples, in particular the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). During the period of 2003 to 2015, various lower court decisions, state legislation, and popular referendums had already legalized same-sex marriage to some degree in thirty-eight out of fifty U.S. states, in the U.S. territory Guam, and in the District of Columbia. In 2013 the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of DOMA, declaring part of it unconstitutional and in breach of the Fifth Amendment in ''United States v. Windsor'' because it "single() out a class of persons" for discrimination, by refusing to treat their marriages equally under federal law when state law had created them equally valid. The ruling led to the federal government's recognition of same-sex marriage, with federal benefits for married couples connected to either the state of residence or the state in which the marriage was solemnized. However the ruling focused on the provision of DOMA responsible for the federal government refusing to acknowledge State sanctioned same-sex marriages, leaving the question of state marriage laws itself to the individual States. The Supreme Court addressed that question two years later in 2015, ruling, in ''Obergefell'', that same-sex married couples were to be constitutionally accorded the same recognition as opposite-sex couples at state/territory levels, as well as at federal level. By the time that same-sex marriage became legal nationally, public opinion on the subject had reached almost 60% approval levels according to polls by the Wall Street Journal, Human Rights Campaign,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Poll: 60 percent of likely voters back gay marriage )〕 and CNN,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=CNN poll: 63 percent of Americans say same-sex couples have a right to marry )〕 having been consistently over 50% since 2010〔Same-Sex Marriage Support Solidifies Above 50% in U.S. http://www.gallup.com/poll/162398/sex-marriage-support-solidifies-above.aspx〕 and trending consistently upward over the years prior. ==History== (詳細はcivil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples in the United States began in the 1970s.〔 In the 1971 case ''Baker v. Nelson'' the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples did not violate the U.S. Constitution. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court denied to hear the case, establishing it as a federal precedent as it came from mandatory appellate review. The issue did not become prominent in U.S. politics until the 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in ''Baehr v. Lewin'' that declared that state's prohibition to be unconstitutional.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/human-services/same-sex-marriage-laws.aspx )〕 During the 21st century, while several countries elsewhere in the world were opening marriage for same-sex couples, public support in the U.S. for same-sex marriage has grown considerably, and national polls conducted since 2011 show that a majority of Americans support legalizing it. However at the same time, many states also passed bans against same-sex marriage, either legislatively or by referendum. 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. On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to publicly declare support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. On November 6, 2012, Maine, Maryland, and Washington became the first states to legalize same-sex marriage through popular vote. In June 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in ''United States v. Windsor'' that federal law could not treat as unequal, marriages that individual States had created as equally valid, when it overturned a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus forcing federal recognition of same-sex marriage and marriage-related benefits when related to a same-sex marriage performed by a state that sanctioned such marriages. In the two years following ''Windsor'', U.S. district courts in 27 states and state courts in six states, plus one state court ruling addressing only the recognition of same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, found that same-sex marriage bans violate the U.S. Constitution, while two U.S. district courts and one state court found that they did not. The flow of federal appeal cases rejecting same-sex marriage bans was finally interrupted in November 2014. In contrast to all other circuits that had ruled at the time, the Sixth Circuit ruled such bans to be constitutional. The panel ruling reversed six U.S. district court rulings that had found bans on same-sex marriage or its recognition to be unconstitutional, reinstating State bans in the four states served by that circuit (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee). On January 16, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear four cases, on appeal from the Sixth Circuit, on whether states may constitutionally ban same-sex marriages or refuse to recognize such marriages legally performed in another state. The cases were: ''Obergefell v. Hodges'' (Ohio), ''Tanco v. Haslam'' (Tennessee), ''DeBoer v. Snyder'' (Michigan), and ''Bourke v. Beshear'' (Kentucky). Decided by the court under the heading of ''Obergefell'' on June 26, 2015, a 5–4 majority of justices led by Justice Anthony Kennedy reversed the Sixth Circuit's upholding of state bans and declared that the Court's rulings must evolve in the light of better understanding of discrimination and the constitutional protections available to protect minorities, and that same-sex couples have the constitutional rights to marry and to have their marriages recognized. ''Obergefell'' therefore overturned the Court's own prior ruling in ''Baker''. 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「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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