Bless it

APRIL DEBOER and Jayne Rowse have lived together for ten years and want to get hitched. However, the state of Michigan, where they live, won’t let them. So they cannot formally adopt each other’s children and there is no guarantee, if one of them dies, that the rest of the family will be allowed to stay together. Another gay couple, Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura, were married in New York. But after Mr DeKoe, a soldier, finished serving in Afghanistan, the couple moved to Tennessee, which does not recognise their union. Both couples are suing to have their states’ bans on same-sex marriage struck down. The case, named , reached America’s Supreme Court on April 28th (see ). Many expect the justices to make gay marriage legal throughout America.