As mentioned in related threads, the Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the Constitution's silence about issues like marriage means that such issues are automatically uniquely state power issues.
The Constitution's silence about marriage also means that things like the so-called "right" of gay marriage is actually constitutionally unprotected, the 14th Amendment (14A) applying only constitutionally enumerated protections to the states as we shall see below.
So the states have the constitutionally unchecked 10th Amendment-protected power to make laws which prohibit gay marriage imo, as long as such laws don't unreasonably abridge rights which the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect.
Getting back to 14A, judges who declare state bans on gay marriage unconstitutional are basing such statements on a PC interpration of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protections Clause (EPC) in Section 1 of that amendment as per the following explanation.
Pro-gay activist judges are wrongly putting on their "magic glasses" to subjectively read the right to gay marriage into the EPC. But in doing so they are wrongly ignoring that the Supreme Court has previously clarified that 14A didn't add new protections to the Constitution. It only strengthens protections expressly amended to the Constitution by the states.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
In fact, the Court's statement from Minor reflects the official clarification of the scope of 14A, the clarification mady by John Bingham, the main author of Section 1. Bingham had stated that the amendment applies only protections enumerated into the Constitution by the states to the states.
“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” — Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)
Again, since the state have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect gay issues, gay marriage in this case, there is no enumerated constitutional protection for gay marriage for the courts to apply the states.
The question concerning the Supreme Court's ignoring of this issue is this. Did pro-gay activist state lawmakers make laws to prohibit gay marriage for the real purpose of using them as pawns for pro-gay activist justices to ignore, both the states and the Court actually intending to promote the constitutionally unprotected gay agenda with such a ploy?
On the other hand, did the legal professionals who have dropped the baton on this issue study law at institutions which are actually teaching post FDR-era pervervions of the Constitution?
“The Constitution’s silence about marriage also means that things like the so-called “right” of gay marriage is actually constitutionally unprotected”
Actually, that’s not true. The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that we are not limited to the rights listed in the Constitution. There has long been an uneasy balance between the 9th and 10th for that reason.
The 10th Amendment argument would be the best one. But if we’re going to claim that marriage is not a right, as the Court has repeatedly found that it is, we’ll need a better argument than “not enumerated”.