couples. and this was 17 years ago that bill clinton, president bill clinton, signed the defense of marriage law into law, saying that the federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages, no matter what the states do. jeff, as soon as you saw who had written the opinion, kennedy, and who he had who he was joined by, the four for want of a better term, liberal justices on the court, you knew what the decision was. well, the thing that s so many extraordinary things about this decision. we now know what the first line of anthony kennedy s obituary, many years in the future, will be. he is the justice who is the author of the three most important gay rights decisions in the history of the supreme court. he wrote lawrence v. texas which said in 2003 that gay people couldn t be thrown in prison for having consensual sex. he wrote the roemer decision which struck down a colorado law that discriminated against gay people. and here, he has now written the opinion that says the