U.S. state constitutional amendments banning same-sex unions
[2][3] Furthermore, the Michigan Supreme Court has held that the state's amendment bans not only same-sex marriage and civil unions, but also domestic partnership benefits such as health insurance.
During that decade, several Western European countries legalized civil unions, and in 1993 the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled in Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Haw.
Social and religious conservatives feared that their own state supreme courts would issue such rulings at some point in the future; in order to prevent this, they proposed additional constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.
That tradition was broken in 1967 with the Loving v. Virginia case decided by a unanimous Supreme Court, which confirmed that the full faith and credit clause did require recognition of all legal marriages.
Similarly, in Obergefell v. Hodges the Supreme Court ruled that the federal constitution required state recognition of same-sex marriages.
State referendums on constitutional bans of same-sex unions have at times been accused of having been used as a "get-out-the-vote" tactic by some Republicans and social conservatives.
[17][19] President George W. Bush's close political consultant, Karl Rove, has been an enthusiastic proponent and organizer of legislation banning same-sex unions.
Kevin Cathcart, director of Lambda Legal pointed to the narrow defeat of Arizona's Proposition 107, which would have rendered civil unions as well as same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
Virginia's amendment not only banned same-sex marriage and civil unions, but arguably rendered any state recognition of private contracts entered into by unmarried couples unconstitutional.
[61] On June 26, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell that state laws banning same-sex marriage violate the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, rendering such laws unconstitutional and invalidating the remaining 14 same-sex marriage bans still being fully or partially enforced.
