The desk of Chancellor of Regnbue Aett

Today is the day we were given equal rights, and that means our community was given the right to have same sex marriage. Today the Court determined our constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection prohibit states from excluding same-sex couples from marriage.

Citing the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion from nearly 12 years ago in Goodridge, the Court today affirmed that by fulfilling “yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”

Of course, so many fought so hard to make today’s historic decision happen.

It was only nine years ago that, in a devastating opinion, New York’s highest court upheld the state’s exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, concluding that the Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father.”