
SCOTUS – Justice Kennedy begins his opinion for the Court with a paean to the institution of marriage: he describes it as “essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations,” “sacred to those who live by their religions” and offering “unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm.”
But it is also, he continues, an institution that “has evolved over time” from an “arrangement by the couple’s parents” to a voluntary agreement between a man and a woman. Similarly, although being gay was once considered an “illness,” public attitudes have shifted significantly.
The Supreme Court, Kennedy’s opinion explains, has long recognized the right to marry as a fundamental right. And although until today it has always done so in the context of opposite-sex couples, he continues, all of the same principles on which the Court has relied in cases involving opposite-sex couples apply equally to same-sex marriage and the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages. (more…)