ABSTRACT
The legal history of same-sex marriage in the United States is a relatively modern one, dating back to the early 1970s when the first lawsuits were filed challenging the notion that marriage rights should be limited to heterosexual couples. Other well-documented marriage trends include delayed age of marriage, increased cohabitation, a growing single population, and more childbearing outside of marriage, additional evidence that marriage in the United States is not a static institution. Historians have also identified documents that demonstrate the existence of institutionalized same-sex unions in ancient Greece, early modern Japan, dynastic China, some American Indian nations, twentieth-century African groups, and many other regions of the world. As a whole, the 1970s represent a dubious beginning for the same-sex marriage movement with all of the legislative setbacks. One of the most widely publicized milestones of the marriage equality movement didn't actually have anything to do with a court case or state-wide ballot initiative.
