tl;dr

This is a tl;dr of my earlier post on Obergefell v. Hodges.

wtl;dr (Way too long; didn’t read):The Constitution says nothing about gay marriage. This issue is the area of the legislature. I understand your feeling of urgency, but this was a bad decision.

tl;dr: I don’t really feel like talking about this, but I will anyway. People tell me it is important.

Basically, the argument of the petitioners is this. The right to marry whomever you please is a fundamental right. The Due Process Clause protects this right. Therefore, it is unconstitutional to prohibit gay marriage.

However, to claim that the right to gay marriage is a fundamental legal right is to disagree with every known society before 2001. This does not disprove it, it just means they have a significant burden of proof.

The role of the Court is not to determine what fundamentals rights are, but to protect enumerated rights. So it doesn’t even matter if is a fundamental right.

Even if the right to be married was enumerated somewhere, to claim that this includes gay marriage would be equivocation. In all our legal documents, marriage is assumed to be defined as the union of a man and a woman.

Even if all the above arguments held no weight, the Due Process Clause is irrelevant to the case. It is talking about the rights of people who shouldn’t be prisoners but are, sort of.

I haven’t talked about whether or not gay marriage should be legal because it does not matter to the ruling. The issue is whether the States are already forced to recognize a gay marriage by law. I do not see how they are.

The gay community should have either passed an amendment to the Constitution or had the states recognize it.

This is not a cold shoulder. I understand that the gay community earnestly desires the benefits of legally recognized marriage, such as tax things and hospital hours and whatnot. I do not begrudge that feeling of urgency, but the Court is not for that. This is not a lack of sympathy, it is a love of the design of our government.

I respect your views and merely disagree. Let’s stay united in peace through disagreement.