¶ … United States Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage. The paper also examines how that decision impacted management policy decisions in terms of public safety administration. An examination of the ruling's overall impact on public policy is also given. Reactions on the ruling are given in the end.
Background knowledge on same sex marriage
For the majority of Americans, the matter of same sex marriage may have first come to their knowledge when it burst into the political limelight in late 2003. At this time, Massachusetts' highest court ruled that the state had no authority or grounds on which to deny lesbian and gay couples the right to marriage. In the next few months after the ruling in the state same sex marriage ceremonies were conducted in many counties and cities across the United States (U.S.) including mass weddings in the city of San Francisco. This brought a lot of media attention to the issue (Brewer and Wilcox, 2005). Religious conservatives pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, a push which eventually had the (then) President's support. On the other hand, several interests groups coalesced to fight and "defend equal rights" for couples who wanted to perform and/or participate in same sex marriages; simultaneously other interest groups also mobilized to campaign and "protect the traditional family" through calling for the banning of same sex marriages.
However, viewed from a wider perspective, same sex marriage is just the latest front or battle in the long political contest over gay rights. Other fronts in the struggle have involved the issue of the legal status of same sex, or homosexual, relations. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court case of Bowers v. Hardwick maintained the constitutional basis of antisodomy laws. The 2003 Supreme Court case, Lawrence v. Texas, was one in which the court overturned its earlier ruling in Bowers. Employment (non) discrimination was one of the other fronts in this contest; the issue was subject to several state legislations and regulations in the 1980s and 1990s, in addition to a congressional vote in 1996 on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The Armed Forces have also been a front on which this contest has played out, such as the controversy that was elicited by President Bill Clinton's push for the inclusion of gays in the army in 1993. The wider picture that has come out of the these previous studies in terms of public opinion is that more and more members of the American public are supporting gay rights (Brewer and Wilcox, 2005).
Recent surveys report that the vast majority in American society supports recognition of same sex marriages and couples. However, the results in these surveys and polls are not uniform; some polling firms are still recording and reporting no majority support in favor of same sex marriages (Flores, 2015). Still, after accounting for this deviation, it can be seen that the majority of the members of the public are in favor of same sex-marriage in the polls done in 2014, and any variations from that estimate can be accounted for by organizational "house" impacts and framing of the question.
The Supreme Court decision
In a historic five to four decision, the United States Supreme Court declared this year (2015) that same sex couples do have the right to marry anywhere across the nation. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, speaking for the majority, noted that it would be a misunderstanding of these women and men to say that they do not respect the idea of marriage. He further noted that, their plea is that they do have respect for it, and that they respect so much that they are seeking to find the fulfillment of marriage for themselves (Spicuzza, et.al, 2015). That is, the hope of these men and women is not to be condemned to live by themselves in loneliness by being excluded from one of the oldest institutions of civilization. The justice further wrote, that they are asking for equal dignity, with regards to the law and that the constitution gives...
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