By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black newspapers).

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WASHINGTON, D.C-The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued two celebrated rulings to bolster the gay rights movement, historical decisions that come on the heels last year of President Obama's announcement of his support of gay marriage, and the echoing of that posture by the NAACP, the nations' oldest and most respected Civil Rights organization.

One case gives federal benefits to spouses of same-sex marriage and the other in essence struck down Proposition 8 through the court's refusal to hear the appeal of a lower court ruling that invalidated it. Adopted by California voters in 2008 that outlawed gay marriage, the defeat of Proposition 8 became a baby of the gay rights movement, as has the campaign for same-sex marriage.

America's high court decided in the first of the two cases, a case out of New York State, that same -sex couples have a constitutional right to federal benefits commensurate to their heterosexual counterparts, and in turn the court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law enacted by Congress in 1996.

President Obama and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio welcomed the decisions as did a host of Congressional Democrats.

Congresswomen Marcia L. Fudge (D-11), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, and Joyce Beatty (D-3), the only two Blacks in Congress from Ohio, with no Blacks at all in Congress from nearby  Kentucky, and the state of Tennessee, had rallied against DOMA.

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, a licensed attorney and Democratic candidate for the 2014 race for Ohio governor, joined gay rights activists and a string of Democratic leaders nationwide in applauding the landmark decision in DOMA.

"The Supreme Court's landmark decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act shows the immense progress we've made in the fight towards equality for our LBGT friends and family," said FitzGerald in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read online Black newspaper. "This decision is long overdue, and I'm proud that by friend Senator Sherrod Brown had the courage to vote against it in Congress so many years ago."

Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the liberal wing of four justices to announce the majority decision in the DOMA case, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion.

The 26-page dissenting opinion was authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the longest serving justice currently on the court.

The plaintiff in the DOMA case is 83-year-old Edwin Windsor, who argued that it was unconstitutional to make her pay nearly $400,000 in federal taxes on her inheritance from her 2007 Canadian marriage to longtime companion Thea Spyer, who died 3 years ago.

In the other case at issue the court's majority effectively permitted same-sex marriage in California by declining to interfere with a trial court's ruling striking down Proposition 8, a voter adopted measure that precluded gay marriage. Here the case was determined on technical grounds with the court saying that the proponents of Proposition 8 lacked standing to appeal in place of the state of California, something even novel attorneys often sometimes understand, and perhaps even a gesture that raises a question of whether the appeal in this instance was frivolous.

Both cases were split 5-4 decisions, which is becoming routine for the court on high profile cases and follow a split decision on Tuesday that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the court's 5-4 ruling last year that upheld Obama's Healthcare Affordability Act, known in laymen's terms as Obamcare.

The decisions will extend benefits to states that permit same-sex marriage but do not effect bans in other states across the country. But they do set the stage for gay rights advocates to seek a good faith modification of the law in those instances, though gay rights cases are  rarely prosecuted without passion by the parties, one way or another.

Before Wednesday's rulings 12 states, with the Bible Belt state of Ohio not being among them, allow same-sex marriage, raising that number to 13 in including California, the nation' largest state by population.

Opponents of the Supreme Court rulings say that marriage should be solely between a man and a woman.

Cleveland Urban News.Com, Copyright 2012