Hoyer Statement on Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) released the following statement today after the Supreme Court announced its decision on marriage equality: 

“Today, the Supreme Court recognized the fundamental right of every loving couple to marry and have those marriages recognized equally across our country.  In doing so, the Court also made it clear that every family in America must be treated the same under our laws.  In years to come, people will look back on this day as one when our nation took a major step forward in the ongoing march of civil rights, equality, and the exercise of the values enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

“Millions of Americans have been working hard over the last two years, since the Supreme Court struck down a key section of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act that had prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages, to bring these cases through the courts and to reach this historic day.  I join in celebrating with them, both to mark the anniversary of that initial ruling and to express my great joy at the decision today that closes a chapter of exclusion. Today’s decision ought to energize us to complete the work of equality by advancing legislation to ban discrimination against LGBT individuals and families in schools and in the workplace. 

“As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’  Today, that arc has curved a great deal in justice’s direction; let us bend it further still.”