Today marks an important milestone for marriage equality in the United States—the 20th anniversary of Massachusetts becoming the first state in the nation to legally recognize same-sex marriage, following its highest court’s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.
In the ensuing years, this historic moment was followed by nationwide change, culminating in two landmark cases in the U.S. Supreme Court: United States v. Windsor (2013), which declared the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as between one man and one woman to be unconstitutional, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which recognized that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees marriage equality as a matter of federal law.
