Summary: 1990-2001

In the 1990s we see steady activity, the first landmark cases for same-sex couples, and the attendant backlash.

Ninia Baehr and
Genora Dancel

In the mid-90’s, Baehr v. Lewin in Hawaii for the first time says that yes, same-sex couples are, like everyone else, fundamentally human and therefore entitled to marry under the state constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process – so long as their marriages don’t harm society. And when given the chance to prove that such marriages were harmful, the government failed.

Similar conclusions were reached in Alaska in 1998 and Vermont in ’99.

Do Not Enter sign The issue finally hit the public consciousness. In reaction, 32 states including Washington and the federal government passed DOMAs – denial of marriage acts that wrote discrimination into state law the same way anti-miscegenation laws did a century before. And, when DOMAs proved weak in the face of constitutional guarantees, we saw constitutional amendments in four states – including Hawaii and Alaska, that resulted in those specific gains being lost.

But Vermont hung in there – sort of. To keep gay people from ruining the word marriage, it opted to create a newfangled kind of legal relationship, civil unions. We did however see nearly 20 attempts in the state legislatures to pass laws allowing same-sex couples to marry.

Timeline key: progress (green), no progress (red), pending court cases (purple),
events that are neutral, not directly related, or with both positive and negative effects (black)