In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 vote that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. “No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision. “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.” Marriage is “keystone of our social order equal dignity in the eyes of the law.” The first same-sex marriages in several states, and resistance in others with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of the unions. In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts …show more content…
The latest decision came exactly two-years after his majority opinion in united States v. Windsor, which struck down a federal law denying benefits to married same-sex couples, and exactly twelve years after his majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas which struck down laws making gay sex a crime. Justice Kennedy said, “The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn the meaning.” This drew a withering response from Justice Scalia, his dissent was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. “They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment,” Justice Scalia wrote the majority, “a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the same since. These justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until fiveteen years ago, cannot possibly be supported by