Map: The State of Marriage Equality in America

Where in the United States do gay people have the right to get hitched?

It’s been a week of wins and losses no matter which side you’re on in the gay-marriage debate.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama finally announced that he supports gay marriage. He emphasized that this is his personal opinion, and that he still thinks states should decide the issue on their own. Despite that caveat, gay rights supporters still had plenty of cause to celebrate. But a day before the president’s historic announcement, voters in North Carolina passed Amendment 1, making it the 30th state with a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Here’s a handy map that shows how far marriage equality has come—and how far it still has to go.


For some perspective, here’s a map Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland made that shows you which states would allow you to marry your cousin:

Cousin Lovin' Map

And for another perspective, here’s another map Mac made. This one shows which states do—and don’t—have laws prohibiting bestiality.

Update: And here’s a map that my colleague Tim Murphy found. It shows you where sodomy is illegal in the US—including the states where it’s illegal only if you’re gay.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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