Hawaii's role as the starting point for the global same-sex marriage fight is being revisited during Pride Week, a win decades in the making for the couples who pushed it.

• Three same-sex couples applied for marriage licenses in 1990, were turned down by the state health department, and sued.
• At the time no state or country anywhere allowed same-sex marriage, and the US Supreme Court had just upheld laws criminalizing gay relationships.
• Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the couples had a right to marry unless the state could show a compelling reason to say no, and a lower court found none.
• The backlash was immediate: Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, and Hawaii voters banned same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment in 1998.
• Hawaii finally legalized it in 2013, becoming the 15th state to do so.

Outlook: The Honolulu Pride Parade runs this Saturday, with the original case now remembered as the spark for a movement that went national.