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In 1989, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that allowed homosexual couples and unmarried heterosexual couples to register for domestic partnerships, which granted hospital visitation rights and other benefits. Unfortunately for these couples trying to get married, the celebration was short-lived. Do you get nervous on Friday the 13th? Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that DOMA violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, and the U.S. Then, in 1993, the best court docket in Hawaii ruled that a ban on similar-intercourse marriage could violate that state constitution’s Equal Protection Clause-the first time a state court docket has ever inched toward making gay marriage legal. The act was a huge setback for the wedding equality motion, however transient good news arose three months later: Hawaii Judge Kevin S. C. Chang ordered the state to stop denying licenses to identical-intercourse couples. The Hawaii Supreme Court sent the case-brought by a gay male couple and two lesbian couples who were denied marriage licenses in 1990-again for further review to the lower First Circuit Court, which in 1991 initially dismissed the suit. In October 2013, a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts and an unmarried same-intercourse couple challenged the state's identical-intercourse marriage ban within the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. |
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