Posted on 06/26/2015 8:41:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Distancing themselves from the majority on the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion to Wednesday's Defense Against Marriage Act ruling, stating that “same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy – but not a difficult question of constitutional law."
"The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter into a same-sex marriage,” the justices wrote.
The landmark case was filed by Edith Windsor of New York, who was forced to pay taxes on an inheritance when Thea Spyer, the woman she married in Ontario, Canada, died in 2009.
Windsor was asking the court to “resolve a debate between two competing views of marriage,” the dissent reads: traditional marriage, between a man and a woman, and what the justices refer to as “consent-based” marriage defined as: “… the solemnization of mutual commitment – marked by strong emotional attachment and sexual attraction – between two persons.”
“The Constitution does not codify either of these views of marriage,” Alito writes. “The silence of the Constitution on this question should be enough to end the matter as far as the judiciary is concerned.”
Windsor asked the Supreme Court to look at DOMA through the lens of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. But Alito argued that the due process clause does not apply to this case.
“It is well established that any 'substantive' component to the Due Process Clause protects only those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’” Alito explains in his dissent. “It is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”
In fact, Alito points out, “No country allowed same-sex couples to marry until the Netherlands did so in 2000.”
“What Windsor and the United States seek, therefore, is not the protection of a deeply rooted right but the recognition of a very new right,” Alito writes. And because of the lack of deep-rooted history, he believes the “Justices have cause for both caution and humility.”
“Perhaps because they cannot show that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our Constitution, Windsor and the United States couch their arguments in equal protection terms,” Alito writes.
“In my view, the approach that Windsor and the United States advocate is misguided,” since they asked the court "to rule that the presence of two members of the opposite sex is as rationally related to marriage as white skin is to voting or a Y-chromosome is to the ability to administer an estate,” Alito maintained.
“In our system of government, ultimate sovereignty rests with the people, and the people have the right to control their own destiny. Any change on a question so fundamental should be made by the people through their elected officials,” he added.
“I hope that the Court will ultimately permit the people of each State to decide this question for themselves. Unless the Court is willing to allow this occur, the whiffs of federalism in the today’s opinion of the court will soon be scattered to the wind.”
This week, with three rulings, the SC has effect effectively nullified the constitution.
That is it! We need a Constitutional amendment establishing marriage as one male and one female human being.
C’mon you billionaire rich conservatives like Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly. Get this done. Start demanding on every show that we pass a new Constitutional Amendment establishing marriage as one man and one woman.
This would pass easily. Why hasn’t this been done already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
pfl
I demand a Constitutional Amendment establishing Marriage as one man and one woman.
The Uniparty will do nothing.
Voting for the “lesser of 2 evils” has now left us with nothing but evil.
Why does no one bring up that Utah was not allowed to join the union until it abolished polygamy? That was a national decision that defined marriage as one man, one woman. It was part of the first Republican platform.
The rebellion will begin in 3...2...1...
Yea but its a lesser greater evil. Or something. It’s hard keeping their heiarchy of good evil and bad evil straight.
I’d thing evil would be enough to set off some nuclear powered warning signs for ‘conservatives...I guess not. Maybe they are USSC conservatives that just changed the definition of evil to good.
It’s all so complex...
Who is gonna rebel? The lesser evil voters that empowered this fiasco with Pols refusing to defend DOMA?
Hardly.
Regular people? Conservative politicians? I bet there will be blow back on this.
I think you are right but the Leftists will not be satisfied with this. They will press their attack on Christianity hoping to extinguish it from the face of the earth. We know they can’t win but many will suffer great persecution until then.
Now look at the vote on this marriage thing....all three women voted for it. And while certainly men are involved, I believe women had the strongest drive in this "rights" issue. Women like "rights" issues....like killing babies is a right.
We need the old boys club to return us to the true intention of marriage. I think they can.
The regular people and pols that refused to defend DOMA? The regular people that screamed for lesser evil and GOT what they screamed for? How many tens of millions was that in the genpub?
How many hundreds right here on FR?
They DEMANDED that the guy that installed the first gay marriage in America and invented Obamacare become president, then DEMANDED we elect Mitch and Jonbon who openly stated their intent to WORK WITH Obama prior to the election.
Those people are the vast majority of our right wing Idiocracy and they will kneel as always.
Kennedy talks to much. I would have greater respect if he wrote, "what business is it of the government to tell an individual who can get married". His expansion of children protection lack sociological studies and opens up more litigation as studies become available.
In the end, states are going to have to move to marriage contracts and away from licenses. They can define that a Marriage contract is between to Adult people only. Officiating weddings is over and marriage is a church is voluntary and completely protected by the first amendment.
States should move to Louisana's Covenant Marriage. Link
: )
“They DEMANDED that the guy that installed the first gay marriage in America and invented Obamacare become president, then DEMANDED we elect Mitch and Jonbon who openly stated their intent to WORK WITH Obama prior to the election.”
FACT
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.