NEW YORK – Riding a remarkable wave of 40 rulings across the country affirming marriage for gay couples, Freedom to Marry released It’s Time, a national TV ad highlighting the tangible harms to same-sex couples still discriminated against in many states. The Supreme Court officially begins its new term Monday, with marriage cases from Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana, and Wisconsin under consideration.
“The ad underscores the human costs of prolonging marriage discrimination,” said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry. “Every day of denial is a day of real and needless injury, indignity, and injustice for too many families across the country — and time matters. America is ready for the freedom to marry, 40 lower court rulings have affirmed the freedom to marry, even opponents are saying it’s time to bring the country to national resolution — and it is, indeed, time.”
The thirty-second ad airs on Sunday morning network news shows in the Washington, D.C. market and on cable news next week.
Even opponents of the freedom to marry agree on the need for swift review by the Supreme Court. In papers filed earlier this month, the state of Utah, which is defending its withholding the freedom to marry from same-sex couples, declared that the marriage question is of “immense national importance and warrants this Court’s immediate review.”
Since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Windsor case in June 2013, 40 rulings – from both Republican and Democratic-appointed judges – have held that marriage discrimination is unconstitutional.
