DeGeneres lauds court for taking on gay marriage

Bill Keveney | USA TODAY

PASADENA, Calif. — Ellen DeGeneres was in the middle of promoting her new NBC comedy, One Big Happy, on Friday when she was told that the U.S. Supreme Court had just agreed to hear a case that will decide the issue of gay marriage nationwide.

"Yay! It's about time," said DeGeneres, a comedian and talk show host who made the groundbreaking decision in 1997 to come out as a lesbian while she was starring in a sitcom.

The high court has previously made more-limited decisions regarding same-sex marriage, with gay men and lesbians now able to marry in 36 states.

During a panel at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, DeGeneres, who is married to actress Portia de Rossi, discussed the issue in a civil-rights context. She said she hoped the general public, not just people who are gay, would get behind efforts to make marriage available to gay as well as straight couples.

"It's funny. I don't know if you've seen the movie Selma, but the thing that changed the civil rights movement was when white people got involved and started marching because, until then, it was just nothing but violence and disaster. It continued to be for a while," she said.

DeGeneres elaborated on her hopes for widespread support for the right to marry.

"We need everyone on our side. We're trying to do this march and we just need people that believe in equality and believe in fairness and love," she said. "If we have people that will join us and give us that which is only fair to have, the same right everybody else has, then it's a wonderful world."

DeGeneres is an executive producer of Happy, which focuses on a non-traditional family: a man who decides to have a baby with his best friend, a lesbian, before marrying another woman.