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Black Lesbian And Gay Families

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Although marriage equality continues to be in the legislative and media spotlight, little attention has been placed on the significance of legalizing same sex marriage for Black families. This article will discuss the available research on Black lesbian and gay families, highlighting both the strengths and challenges these families negotiate. Focusing on the resources Black lesbian and gay families provide to the Black community, such as foster parenting and adopting Black children, mentoring runaway and throwaway Black youth and leadership on Black social justice issues, this article will demonstrate the value of Black lesbian gay families towards the larger goal of strengthening all Black families and communities. Keywords:…show more content…
The struggle for marriage equality in the United States began in the 1970’s. It became more prominent in 1993 when the Hawaiian Supreme court declared that state’s prohibition against marriage between people of the same sex to be unconstitutional (Weiss, 2013). In response to this, there was significant public outcry and opponents of marriage equality asserted that marriage could only be defined as a union between a man and a woman. This resulted in prohibitive legislation that was enacted in 1996 known as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) DOMA prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages (Baker, 2013). DOMA also allowed each state to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Be that as it may, in the 21st century, public and legislative support for marriage equality has grown and various national polls conducted since 2011 show that a majority of Americans support marriage equality (Live Science Staff, 2011; Newport, 2011). On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to publicly declare support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. The provision of DOMA, forbidding the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages was struck down by the Supreme Court on June 26th of 2013. In the ensuing two years, 36 states, the District of Columbia, 24 Native American Tribal jurisdictions and Guam had legalized same sex marriage. However up
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