Ct gay marriage
Landmark gay marriage case has Connecticut ties, impact
Washington — Homosexual rights advocate Mary L. Bonauto made history in Connecticut when she championed a lawsuit that legalized gay marriage in the state. She is now in position to produce it on the national stage when the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a landmark lgbtq+ marriage case.
The stakes are high as Bonauto awaits the court’s decision on a case she argued in April.
The decision, which could appear as early as Thursday, will decide the fate of same-sex attracted marriage in many states in the nation and could, in one observer’s words, “nationalize gay marriage.”
It could also have an indirect impact on married, queer Connecticut couples. In 2008, Bonuato helped fellow attorney Ben Klein win a 4-3 decision at the Connecticut Supreme Court that determined that the state’s recognition of gay civil unions, a marriage-like legal arrangement that Connecticut offered to gay couples since 2005, was not an acceptable alternative to marriage.
The decision in Kerrigan & Mock v. Connecticut Dept. of Public Health established same-sex marriages in Connecticut.
Bonauto, the civil rights project director
Project partners:
Central Connecticut State University HIST 403 class, “Exploring GLBTQ Archives”
Professor William J. Mann
Anna Fossi
Eve Galanis
Ria Amerson
Joshua Bouchard
Kacie Brennan
Lauren Cavaliero
Sara Conlon
Chelsea DiNeno
Michelle Gil
Jayme Hebert
Elizabeth Klopp
Daniel MacNeil
Kevin Milewski
Carrie Mott
Nicholas Palomba
Katherine Samuels
Victoria Troche
Christina Volpe
Connecticut Museum of Culture and History
Ilene Frank, Chief Curator/Chief Operating Officer
Andrea Rapacz, Director of Exhibitions & Collections
Ben Gammell, Exhibit Developer
With special thanks to Richard Nelson, whose timeline of Connecticut LGBTQ history provided a basis for the students’ research.
The Connecticut Museum of Culture and History is grateful to this project’s donors.
Special thanks to our venture sponsors below:
Duff Ashmead & Eric Ort
Louis Lista & Paul DeVeau
Dan Sullivan & Rob Biddleman
Vote caps decade-long Conn. same-sex attracted marriage fight
A decade-long battle for marriage equality in Connecticut ended when the General Assembly voted to update the state's marriage laws to conform with a landmark court decree allowing gay and woman loving woman couples to tie the knot.
"It feels so excellent. It really does sense like the book is closing," said Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights group that has led the fight for lgbtq+ marriage in the state.
A spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she will sign the bill, which passed 28-7 in the Senate and 100-44 in the House of Representatives late Wednesday, into law. While Rell, a Republican, signed the state's 2005 civil unions regulation, she has said she believes that marriage should be between a gentleman and a woman.
The bill comes six months after the State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that homosexual couples have the right to wed in Connecticut, rather than accept the civil union law engineered to give them the same rights as married couples.
It redefines marriage in Connecticut as the legal union of two people. State law previously defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Fourth state to allow gay marriage
Even if the
Same-Sex Marriage in Connecticut
As of June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court issued a decision that gay couples can wed in all 50 states
The obeying is an excerpted history from GLAD’s Answers for the LGBTQ Community: (https://www.glad.org/issues/marriage-connecticut/)
Requirements for Marriage in Connecticut
Any couple regardless of gender can marry in Connecticut, provided they meet the state’s marriage requirements. Those requirements include:
- must be 18 or older;
- not be married or in a civil union with a different person (you can marry the same person with whom you already have a civil union);
- not be closely related by blood or marriage; and
- have approval if under conservatorship.
For more on “Connecticut Laws About Marriage”, visit the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries webpage, https://www.jud.ct.gov/lawlib/law/marriage.htm
Where to acquire a Marriage License
Each person wishing to get married must go to a town hall and fill out a marriage application (an application can also be downloaded from the internet and filled out at the town hall). If a person is a Connecticut resident, that person must go to the town hall where he/she