U.S. becomes 25th country to guarantee same-sex marriage rights nationwide with Supreme Court decision

• Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion in the 5-4 ruling, which cast same-sex marriage as a fundamental constitutional right.
• The ruling legalizes same-sex marriage in the 13 remaining states that have yet to have pass marriage equality legislation or have judicial rulings issued effectively legalizing the recognition.
• The decision is the culmination of a nearly unbroken line of state and federal court decisions that have dismantled bans on same-sex marriage, most spurred by the Supreme Court’s US v. Windsor decision that ruled much of the federal legislation banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

“It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. … Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Read the full story at the New York Times and Quartz.