The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, holds that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex. And all states must recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when a marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding same-sex marriage bans in several states is reversed.
It's clear that the Court's opinion relies on the dual rationales of fundamental rights AND equal protection.
Chief Justice John Roberts is back on the conservative reservation for his dissent. Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito also wrote their own dissents.
Chief Justice Roberts has the principal dissent, which is 31 pages long. Toward the end of it, he says, "If you are among the many Americans -- of whatever sexual orientation -- who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it."
From the majority opinion, addressing the role of history in the constitutional analysis: "The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a character protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning."
"The dissents [by Scalia, Thomas, and Alito] are extremely strident." Chief Justice Roberts took a wholly different, conciliatory tone in his.
Scalia's opinions are now being called "lemontations". Personally, I like Constitutional interpretations that stress equal rights and equal protections.
J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.