Report from The Washington Post.
Massachusetts’ highest court today invalidated a state ban on same-sex marriages, ruling that the right to marry is “the right to marry the person of one’s choice,” regardless of gender….
It rejected the state’s chief argument in favor of the ban: that the purpose of marriage is “procreation.” That, the court concluded, is largely a cover for “persistent prejudices” against homosexuals.
It then took the extraordinary step of redefining the common law definition of marriage in Massachusetts.
Marriage, under the law, is not merely a union between a man and a woman, the court said.
Rather, it is “the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others.”