James Baldwin The Price Of The Ticket Case Analysis

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In the film, James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket, he calls to our attention the fight for equality by African Americans living in the United States prior to the 1960s civil rights movements. While there are still on-going arguments for equality in the African American community, an equally important movement for equality is unfolding within the Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered communities today. Both same-sex couples and African Americans have fought on going battles for equality. One particular area where both groups have experienced obstacles is marriage rights. Two important cases in their quest for marriage equality were Loving v. Virginia (1967) which outlawed state bans on interracial marriages and most recently, Obergefell v. Hodges …show more content…

There are over 1000 federal benefits and tax rights extended to heterosexual married couples that are not available to all same-sex couples (Schappel, 2013). Prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, unless a same-sex couple lived in a state that allowed them to marry, laws in existence created hardships. When the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, couples who actually were married in and living in the 12 states were granted access to benefits of the Family Leave Medical Act (FMLA), the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (Schappel 2013). The downside of this is that it only provided benefits for people in 12 states. The socioeconomic impact of these four acts alone should have dictated that same-sex marriage needed to be legal in all 50 …show more content…

In the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, the US Supreme Court stated that “A first premise of the Court 's relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy”(2016). Making same-sex marriage illegal placed restrictions on the freedom of the people within that community to choose their life partner as their legally recognized spouse. Because they could not enjoy the full benefits of marriage, their pursuit of happiness was significantly infringed

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