Some Thoughts And Images

Now that the celebration has died down I some thoughts on the Supreme Court ruling yesterday.

We won a major victory but the battle is not over, right now the conservatives are looking for ways around the ruling, new laws to nullify the court decision, anyway to get out of recognizing same-sex marriage. Louisiana is rumored to stop writing marriage licenses while other states are trying to pass “Religious Freedom” laws. While in Congress there is talk of passing new laws banning marriage equality. So called “Family” associations are calling for new laws to renew the “Sanctity of Marriage.”

The Chief Justice Roberts saw it this way,

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

The Constitution says nothing about a right to same-sex marriage, but the Court holds that the term “liberty” in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment encompasses this right. Our Nation was founded upon the principle that every person has the unalienable right to liberty, but liberty is a term of many meanings. For classical liberals, it may include economic rights now limited by government regulation. For social democrats, it may include the right to a variety of government benefits. For today’s majority, it has a distinctively postmodern meaning. To prevent five unelected Justices from imposing their personal vision of liberty upon the American people, the Court has held that “liberty” under the Due Process Clause should be understood to protect only those rights that are “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’” … And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.

But the majority of justices didn’t see it that way. Justice Kennedy said…

The right of same-sex couples to marry that is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment is derived, too, from that Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way, though they set forth independent principles. Rights implicit in liberty and rights secured by equal protection may rest on different precepts and are not always coextensive, yet in some instances each may be instructive as to the meaning and reach of the other. In any particular case one Clause may be thought to capture the essence of the right in a more accurate and comprehensive way, even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right.

Kennedy rightfully saw that by denying everyone the right to marriage violated the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

The courts do not make law, they interpret the law. We might not like the way they interpret it like the “Citizens United” ruling but they don’t make the law.

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Yesterday I went to Hartford to the rally at Old State House, it was originally schedule as a Pride Rally but it turned into a celebration of the Supreme Court ruling on marriage…

Hartford's Mayor Pedro E. Segarra at Connecticut's Old State House.

Crowd at the rally at the Old State House

Shawn Lang Director of Public Policy with AIDS Connecticut

Rev. Aaron Miller pastor of MCC Hartford

Anne Stanback Equality Federation and former Executive Director of Love Makes A Family

Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman

State Comptroller Kevin Lembo

State Senator Beth Bye

Mike Lawlor Office of Policy and Management, passed co-chair of the Judaical Committee