Two Momentous Wins for Equal Rights Today!

June 26, 2013 will forever stand as a momentous day for equality in America.  I grew up watching network news film of black and Latino Americans getting beaten and killed for attempting to claim their constitutional rights.  Gay, lesbian and transgender Americans were publicly reviled, bullied and denigrated.  Today's Supreme Court rulings overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8 denial of same-sex marriage rights are the latest crowning achievements in the nation's long struggle to fully embody its own founding credo: "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." The progress I have seen over time has seemed long in coming, but is perhaps for that very reason all the more inspiring and breathtaking.  What a glorious day in American history.

Here is part of the statement released by President Barack Obama on the DOMA ruling. 

"I applaud the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal -- and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

And here is part of the announcement on the California Proposition 8 decision from the office of Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr.

From The Office of the Governor
6-26-2013

SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued the following statement on the United States Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry):

“After years of struggle, the U.S. Supreme Court today has made same-sex marriage a reality in California. In light of the decision, I have directed the California Department of Public Health to advise the state’s counties that they must begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in California as soon as the Ninth Circuit confirms the stay is lifted,” said Governor Brown.