A day after delivering a blow to voting rights and civil rights in America, the US Supreme Court gave a major boost to marriage equality with two landmark rulings.

Cheers went up outside the Court in Washington, DC after the announcement of the narrow 5-4 decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal benefits to married gay and lesbian couples by strictly defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Religious conservatives responded with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth without ever explaining how or why marriage equality affects the lives of anyone outside of a same-sex marriage.

In fact, that consistent failure to make the case led to the court’s second decision on marriage equality, which in effect kills California’s “Proposition 8” which banned gay marriage in that state.  Passed by voters in 2008, public opinion has rapidly changed.  Most Americans now approve of marriage equality.  A lower court had ruled Prop 8 was unconstitutional, which brought the challenge from social conservatives. 

But the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the challengers had no standing because they could not prove that gay marriage did anything other than join gay people in marriage.  And that is not a threat to anyone else’s rights or well-being.