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Nevada Becomes First US State To Recognise Gay Marriage In State Constitution

Nevada has become the first US state to recognise gay marriage in their constitution, after voters overturned an 18-year-old ban on same-sex marriage.

Question 2 on Nevada ballots asked voters whether they support an amendment recognising marriage “as between couples regardless of gender.”

The “Marriage Regardless of Gender Amendment” also asked if religious organisations and clergy retained the right “to refuse to solemnize a marriage.”

The results were 62 percent in favour and 38 percent against, according to the Nevada secretary of state, with more than three-fourths of the votes counted.


“It feels good that we let the voters decide,” Equality Nevada President Chris Davin told ‘NBC News’. “The people said this, not judges or lawmakers. This was direct democracy — it’s how everything should be.”

It was a voter referendum in 2002 that originally changed the Nevada Constitution to define marriage as between “a male and female person.”

A domestic partnership law was passed by the Legislature in 2009, overriding a veto by then-Governor Jim Gibbons.

Same-sex marriage wasn’t recognised in the state until 2014, after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled bans in Nevada and Idaho violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A year later, the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges invalidated same-sex marriage bans nationwide.

But supporters of Question 2 say it’s more than a mere formality.

“It’s the fix we need to make here,” André Wade, head of Silver State Equality, which worked to promote Question 2, said in an interview. “We have discriminatory language in the constitution, and we need to take it out. We know Nevadans value equality, and we want our constitution to mirror that.”

Davin said members of the LGBTQ community wanted something concrete to protect same-sex marriage in case "the federal level ever revokes it — which is what a lot of folks are worried about with the new Supreme Court.”

Nevada is one at least of 30 states that passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The first was Hawaii in 1998, and the last was North Carolina in 2012. Since then public opinion has shifted dramatically, and 70 percent of Americans now support the right of gay couples to wed, according to an October poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Now that the state has changed its constitution, Davin is certain others will follow.

“People look at Nevada — at Las Vegas, at Reno — as a place where everyone comes to get married,” he said. “And the people of Nevada are saying, ‘We don’t care who you marry.’”



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