One date, two turning points for marriage equality

On 4 November 2008, the United States experienced a historic election night. Barack Obama was elected the country's first Black president. For many gay men and lesbians in California, however, the same night ended in bitter defeat. By fifty-two to forty-eight per cent, voters passed Proposition 8. The amendment wrote into the state constitution that only marriage between a man and a woman was valid.

What made it so explosive: only in May of the same year, the California Supreme Court had declared the marriage ban unconstitutional. Since then, thousands of same-sex couples had married. The vote reversed this progress at a stroke. A broad alliance opposed the measure, from big corporations and unions to the sitting governor. Its supporters relied above all on parents' fears that marriage equality would soon be taught in schools.

Those affected did not give up. Two years later, a federal judge declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional, and from 2013 same-sex couples were again able to marry in California.

Exactly six years after the vote, on 4 November 2014, another marriage ban fell, this time in conservative Kansas. Federal judge Daniel Crabtree found that the ban violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The plaintiffs were two lesbian couples, including Kail Marie and Michelle Brown, who had lived together for more than twenty years. The state announced an appeal the same day, but in vain. A good week later, the ruling took effect.

Kansas thus became the thirty-third state in which same-sex couples could marry. In June 2015, the Supreme Court finally made marriage equality the law of the land. The same day twice, a turning point twice: once backwards, once forwards.