Washington (Reuters) – Four months after the U.S.Supreme Court issued two major rulings on gay marriage, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on Tuesday presided over a same-sex wedding ceremony at the court building.
Court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg confirmed that O’Connor, appointed to the court by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981, oversaw the wedding of Jeffrey Trammell and Stuart Serkin. She left office in 2006.
It was not the first gay wedding ceremony at the court building. Over the weekend, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presided over the wedding there of New York couple Ralph Lee Pellecchio and James Carter Wernz, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times.
In August, Ginsburg became the first justice to officiate at the wedding of a gay couple.
At the end of June, the court struck down a federal law that denied federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples and paved the way for gay marriage in California by letting stand a ruling that struck down a state law that restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples.
Gay marriage is now legal in Washington, D.C., and 14 U.S. states.
by Lawrence Hurley – Reuters (Editing by Howard Goller)
Source – The Chicago Tribune
