Marriage Equality: Making the President’s Words a Reality

Following President Obama’s historic announcement that he supports same-sex couples’ freedom to marry, Lambda Legal staff & attorneys talked to reporters about the continuing fight.

Executive Director Kevin Cathcart discussed the historic nature of yesterday’s announcement with Associated Press Television, and spoke to Politico about the announcement’s timing. National Marriage Project Director Camilla Taylor, speaking to The Guardian, emphasized that the announcement sends “a message to the country that discrimination is not appropriate." The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that after the announcement, a state Assemblyman took steps to repeal the state’s constitutional marriage ban, citing  our federal marriage  lawsuit on behalf of six Nevada same-sex couples.

In his statement, the President spoke candidly about how he had moved from his belief that civil unions alone were sufficient to protect same-sex couples to his understanding, now, that loving same-sex couples should have the freedom to marry. The discriminatory nature  of civil unions and domestic partnerships is at the heart of Lambda Legal’s two current marriage equality cases in New Jersey and Nevada.

Our marriage equality cases are part of a larger strategy of building a country where same-sex couples can legally marry from coast-to-coast. Lambda Legal’s work has already been instrumental in moving us closer to the end of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. Our litigation also brought marriage equality to Iowa in 2009 with our historic victory in Varnum vs. Brien.