Do celebrate, do not fear landmark marriage ruling

The Supreme Court of the United States took another giant step last week in affirming the principle that there should be no second-class American citizens.

The court has made such affirmations in the past. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous court outlawed segregated schools, finding that separate schools were inherently unequal.

In 1967, in another unanimous ruling, the court struck down a Virginia law that criminalized interracial marriage in that state and in all others.

Last week, in an Ohio case, Obergefell v. Hodges, the court ruled that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Speaking for the five-justice majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “no union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.” The plaintiffs in the case, Justice Kennedy wrote, “ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Marriage also confers rights and responsibilities on the couple – including various legal rights and tax advantages – that are exclusive to the institution. Government should not be picking winners and losers in a legal lottery based on the sexual orientation that a person had from birth.

LACK OF UNANIMITY

Unfortunately the Supreme Court rarely speaks with unanimity these days, a reflection of the divisive partisan politics that is making Washington, D.C., an increasingly dysfunctional place. No longer content to dissent, some justices feel obliged to demean their colleagues and even to call into question the legitimacy of the court on which they enjoy lifetime appointments.

Justice Antonin Scalia included a paragraph in his dissent in which he described the court as a congregation of East Coast elitists without even a single Protestant among them. The implication that the court does not represent the majority of Americans is dangerous for any justice to make but especially for a justice such as Scalia, who believes all constitutional questions should be viewed through an originalist’s prism.

The court has spoken, and now the reaction to what it said is in the hands of politicians. It is remarkable that just a little more than 50 years ago, a presidential candidate named John F. Kennedy was obliged to declare that while he was a Catholic, he was not running to be a Catholic president. Today, several Republican presidential candidates specifically state that they oppose and will defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell because it runs counter to their religious beliefs.

That is a dangerous turn of events for a country not founded as a theocracy.

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has told county clerks that they don’t have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and judges don’t have to marry them if doing so conflicts with the state official’s religious beliefs. That is an extraordinary departure for our nation’s traditional separation of church and state.

By the same token, no priest, minister, rabbi or imam will be compelled by the court’s ruling to perform a same-sex marriage. Whether to perform same-sex marriages is only an issue between the clergy and the denominations to which they belong.

EMERGING GAY PRIDE

It is no coincidence that this ruling follows a 40-year era of emerging gay pride. As gay men and women stopped living in fear and shame, Americans came to see how many of their friends, neighbors, church members and relatives were gay. They saw that two men or two women could raise a child, whether that child was a product of a previous heterosexual marriage, a surrogate arrangement or an adoption.

Everyday human contact has fueled a dramatic change in public perception, with support for gay marriage growing from 35 percent to 60 percent in just a decade.

Justice Scalia says that the 14th Amendment can’t be applied to gay marriage because when the 14th Amendment passed, the idea of gay marriage would have been repugnant. But so, too, would have been the idea of interracial marriage. Yet the Supreme Court in 1957 cited the amendment in striking down state laws that criminalized interracial marriage.

Justice Kennedy wrote that “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 14th Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”

The times have changed, and people’s perception of justice has changed. It’s pro- gress – the same kind that outlawed slavery, gave women the vote and gave African-Americans civil rights. It should be embraced and celebrated, not feared and defied.