Supreme Court Rules Same-Sex Couples Have Right To Marry

The Supreme Court declared Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States.

The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that same-sex marriage must be allowed under the United States Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, and all wrote separate dissents.

Alito wrote, “Today’s decision usurps the constitutional right of the people to decide whether to keep or alter the traditional understanding of marriage.”

Roberts said gay marriage supporters should celebrate, but don’t celebrate the Constitution.

“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,” Roberts wrote.

Scalia wrote his dissent “to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.”

“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a
majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves,” Scalia wrote.

Thomas wrote, “Aside from undermining the political processes that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect.”

President Barack Obama called the ruling a “big step in our march toward equality.”

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