The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed a significant victory to gay-rights advocates by recognizing that married gay men and women are eligible for federal benefits and paving the way for same-sex marriage in California.
The court, however, fell short of a landmark ruling endorsing a fundamental right for gay people to marry.
The two cases, both decided on 5-4 votes, concerned the constitutionality of a key part of a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, that denied benefits to same-sex married couples and a California state law enacted in 2008, called Proposition 8, that banned gay marriage.
Gay marriage is an issue that stirs cultural, religious and political passions in the United States as elsewhere. Gay-marriage advocates celebrated outside the Supreme Court. An enormous cheer went up as word arrived that DOMA had been struck down.
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