With one of its rulings the Supreme Court mandated federal recognition of gay couples married in places that permit it; with another, it reopened the door to same-sex marriage in California, our most populous state. These practical consequences are huge.
But the two decisions together also have another kind of effect, deeply emotional, potently symbolic and impossible to measure - but arguably much more sweeping. Like all that happens at the highest levels of our government, like all the judgments rendered and statements made by the officials chosen to guide us, the court's actions set a tone. They send a signal. They alter the climate of what's considered just and what's not, of what's permissible and what's intolerable, and that change ripples into every last corner of American life, shaping people's very destinies.
This was hammered home to me by the time I spent recently with a mother, a father and a brother who have known terrible heartbreak and, in its aftermath, spent no shortage of time thinking about the messages that gay Americans receive from the laws and the leaders of our land. Their surname, Clementi, is probably familiar to you. So is much of their story, though maybe not the current chapter.
In September 2010, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, hurled himself from the George Washington Bridge.
And in the months following his suicide, the pain preceding it came into disturbing, shameful focus. He'd been harassed online by his college roommate, who had deemed his homosexuality worthy of taunts and titters. He'd worried about his mother's comfort with his desires, his identity. He was a young man filled with dreams but also with a special set of concerns, with the knowledge that a fundamental part of who he was would cause some people to look down on him and others to reject him.
Is that why he jumped? There's no way to know. "Suicide is an irrational action, so to try to rationalise it I don't think can really be done," his father, Joe Clementi, said to me.
Even so, Joe and his wife, Jane, along with one of their two surviving sons, James, have dedicated themselves to educating people about the problems that perhaps conspired in Tyler's fate.
Through public speaking, lobbying and other work with the Tyler Clementi Foundation, they're trying to stop young people from hurting one another, and they're trying to call out aspects of American life that pass judgment on LGBT people and make some of them, teenagers especially, feel fear and despair.
The Defense of Marriage Act, a central provision of which the Supreme Court struck down on Wednesday, was one of those aspects. Jane said that she didn't see this clearly before Tyler's suicide but that she did after, when she left her evangelical church over its opposition to gay marriage and its other anti-gay stances.
"It's not only people who can intimidate and harass," she told me during a conversation at the Clementis' home in Ridgewood, New Jersey. "It's institutions. It's legislation. With laws the way they are, we're teaching that there's a group of individuals who are 'less than' others."
The haters are thus given license, and the hated are further isolated. "And you never know," said Joe, "where a person is at their particular point in life and what could drive them to a bad decision or to taking a wrong step."
He's right, and that's why it mattered when President Obama mentioned Stonewall in his second Inaugural Address, putting heroes of the gay-rights movement on a par with heroes of any other.
That's why it matters that he hasn't yet signed an executive order demanding that federal contractors not discriminate against gays and lesbians in hiring. He's indulging, and thus excusing, possible bigotry.
As for the Supreme Court, it didn't go as far on Wednesday as it theoretically could have, nor did it speak in a unanimous voice. The journey toward full equality for LGBT Americans is a long way from over.
But what happened was progress. It was hope.
James Clementi, Tyler's brother, is himself gay, and he told me on the phone on Wednesday afternoon that he felt different than he had a day earlier. He felt more included.
Jane said that while the court's rulings in the DOMA and Prop 8 cases were "just a start," they affirmed her belief in "the trajectory of where we're going." They might even save lives, she said.
From what she's lost and from what she's learned, she knows that there are many wounded and fretful young gay people out there, along with many straight peers who may or may not decide that it's O.K. to ridicule them. And there's a chance, a crucial and wonderful chance, that the ripples from Wednesday will reach and teach all of them.
© 2013 The New York Times News Service
