NOM BLOG

Mother Jones: "Risk to SSM 'Very Great' in Supreme Court"

 

More gay marriage activists worried about their prospects at the Supreme Court:

"...The Prop. 8 case argues something much broader, however: It claims there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution, and that any attempt to ban same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment. The Ninth Circuit's ruling was written so narrowly that if the Supreme Court had decided not to take the case, then the Ninth Circuit's decision would have affirmed the rights of same-sex couples in California alone. But if SCOTUS were to affirm the constitutionality of California's ban on same-sex marriage, the ruling could well apply to any such law nationwide.

... When Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberal justices in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), he showed a willingness to split from his conservative colleagues on cases of political and historical import. And Justice Anthony Kennedy authored opinions in Romer v Evans and Lawrence v Texas, the landmark cases that paved the way for subsequent advances in LGBT rights. Still, both men are conservative by nature, and up until November no state had recognized same-sex marriage rights by popular vote. Roberts and Kennedy could well prove sympathetic to conservative arguments that finding a right of same-sex couples to be free of discrimination amounts to "forcing" same-sex marriage on everyone else." -- Adam Serwer at Mother Jones

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