Marriage Equality

Marriage equality means recognizing same-sex marriages with the same legal rights, benefits, and standing as opposite-sex marriages. In the United States it was one of the defining civil rights campaigns of the early 21st century, culminating in the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. In 2022 Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law that December, which repealed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and requires states to recognize valid same-sex and interracial marriages performed elsewhere. Dozens of countries now grant marriage equality, though same-sex relationships remain criminalized in many others.