This card shows the impact of Obergefell c. Hodges on homosexual marriage: NPR

“They ask for an equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” wrote the judge of the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy Obergefell c. Hodges majority opinion. “The Constitution grants them this right.”

With these words, on June 26, 2015, homosexual marriage became legal in all American states. Historical decision 5-4 replaced what had been a patchwork of legal laws and orders in which certain states authorized gay marriages or same-sex civil unions, while others prohibited them and refused to recognize the unions executed outside their borders.

“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the freedom of the person,” said the Supreme Court.

The dramatic change was captured in an NPR card published in 2015, while the Supreme Court judged that equal protections under the 14th amendment require that the states dismissed and recognize homosexual marriages.

Before the decision, gay marriage was legal in 37 states and in the Columbia district. But only 16 of these states had positively legalized homosexual marriage; The others had prohibitions in the books that the federal courts had found unconstitutional. The Supreme Court resumed the Obergefell case after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has maintained prohibitions in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee in November 2014.

Homosexual marriage was debated for decades, but few states have acted to codify these unions, such as Hawaii’s decision to offer reciprocal beneficiary relations in 1997.

Then the Massachusetts legalized homosexual marriage in 2004.

“We thought we were already married,” said Marcia Kadish at NPR later, recalling how she and Tanya McCloskey became the first same -sex couple to marry under the law of the state. “It only made it legal.”

And in 2015, Obergefell Arrived as a moment of the watershed. Immediately after the decision, the same sex couples began to get married across the country.

“It is incredible how fast it has happened to be nothing legally married. In the work of an hour, I suppose – although decades of struggle,” said Lauren Brown of East Lansing to Michigan Public in 2015, while she married Lindsey Wren at the Palais de Justice of the county of Ingham.

Brown, Wren and other couples were able to marry in the hours following the decision.

“I’m glad we were considered real people to get married today, which is great and I feel like I’m going to cry again,” Lori Hazelton told Michigan Public in Muskegon County. “Love is love despite everything.”

In Savannah, in Georgia, Christie and Kindra Baer celebrated their marriage after being together for 13 years. Christie Baer told Georgia Public Broadcasting that their new legal status would facilitate their concerns to raise two children: before, she had not been able to adopt Kindra’s daughter.

“It is very stressful to be in a relationship and to know that at any time and at any time if you break this child that you have raised because yours could be removed,” said Christie.

In the decade since Obergefell, The greatest impact was in the South, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

“From 2014 to 2023, the percentage of same -sex cohabitant couples that were married increased by 21% in the south (38% to 59%),,“The Institute declared in a report inspired by the Obergefell c. Hodges birthday.

Since this month, the United States had approximately 823,000 same married sex couples-more than twice as 10 years ago, the report, citing the American Community Survey data.

Ten years after the decision, the legal position for people who want to marry someone who is not of the opposite sex still rests in the decision of the Supreme Court.

In 2022, the law on respect for marriage became the law, after obtaining bipartite support for the congress. Federal law redefines marriage as “between two individuals”, rather than a man and a woman. It also prohibits states from denying “any right or complaint relating to marriages outside the state on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity or national origin”.

Supporters of homosexual marriage speak with people who leave a gathering in support of the courtboy clerk of the county of Rowan, Kim Davis, on September 8, 2015, in Grayson, Ky.

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But as for the abortion battle Roe c. WadeOpponents of homosexual marriage say they want the Supreme Court to reconsider its Obergefell decision. This year, state legislators in Idaho, Montana, Michigan, Oklahoma and other states have taken resolutions calling for a high court exam.

The judges of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who dissident in the majority decision of 2015, suggested that they are open to this idea. In 2020, when the court refused to hear a matter carried by Kim Davis, a former County clerk in Kentucky, the couple wrote that the court had created a problem that he could solve.

“Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious freedom, ”they added.