NEWSFLASH: Supreme Court Non-Ruling Allows Same-Sex Weddings in 5 More States

Get your bouquets and tuxes and gowns and rice and hankies ready in Virginia, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana: The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to rule on challenges to same-sex marriage in those states. That means lower-court rulings that knocked down bans against such marriages will stand, and marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples will soon be issued.

Six more states—North Carolina, West Virginia, South Carolina, Wyoming, Kansas and Colorado—will probably soon join the growing legion of same-sex-friendly marriage zones, as federal appeals courts have struck down bans there as well. Nineteen states offered gay marriage before today’s decision; that number has immediately jumped to 24 and may soon reach 30. More than 50 percent of the nation will then have ended marriage discrimination, and it’s taken just 10 years since Massachusetts became the first state to take the plunge into equality.

Some marriage equality advocates still hope the Court will rule definitively about same-sex marriage for all states. Said Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry, “The Supreme Court should bring the country to a nationwide resolution.”

But for today, we celebrate.

Does your state have marriage equality?

Photo from Flickr user Jose Antonio Naves under license from Creative Commons 2.0

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