On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to conduct same-sex nuptials, following a decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court the year before. The state issued hundreds of marriage licenses, couples tied the knot and the rest of the nation waited. And waited.
In the summer of 2008, gay couples in California were briefly granted the right to get married, only to have it taken away in a voter referendum later that year. The California referendum passed just days before Connecticut became the next state to legalize same-sex marriage. More than four years passed between the first and second states embracing marriage equality, but the movement would move much faster from that point on. In the previous two years alone, gay marriage has advanced from a minority issue in a few, mostly blue states to a full-blown majority right in more than 30 states across the nation, as well as Washington, D.C.
More than 60 percent of Americans now live in states that allow same-sex nuptials, HuffPost's Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel reported Monday in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision not to hear appeals from states challenging lower court rulings that had recently legalized gay marriage. With 13 more states -- including Nevada and Idaho, which joined the ranks on Tuesday -- beginning or set to begin allowing same-sex marriages, check out how the equality movement has grown below.
GIF created by Jan Diehm for the Huffington Post.Correction: Wisconsin was originally omitted from the GIF in Oct. 2014. The GIF has been updated to include Wisconsin.
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