Gay marriage and the 14th amendment
Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. History and tradition guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.
The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. That method respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to rule the present. Jim Obergefell and others sued for recognition of their same-sex marriages, which were legal in the states where they were married but illegal in other states.
Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.
Hodges, U.S. () (/ ˈoʊbərɡəfɛl / OH-bər-gə-fel), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy concluded that the fundamental right to marry cannot be limited to heterosexual couples.
Marriage remains a building block of our national community. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The four principles and traditions to be discussed demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental under the Constitution apply with equal force to same-sex couples.
They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Court has long held that marriage is a fundamental right. Hodges Obergefell v.
14th Amendment and Marriage : Here, the Court held that states must allow and recognize same-sex marriages under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment
9. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other. No longer may this liberty be denied to them. That process is guided by many of the same considerations relevant to analysis of other constitutional provisions that set forth broad principles rather than specific requirements.
Here, the Court held that states must allow and recognize same-sex marriages under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.
The Fourteenth Amendment remains crucial in future LGBTQ rights battles. Like choices concerning contraception, family relationships, procreation, and childrearing, all of which are protected by the Constitution, decisions concerning marriage are among the most intimate that an individual can make.
The denial of marriage impedes many legal rights and privileges, such as adoptions, parental rights, and property transfer.
Obergefell v Hodges Constitution : Two years later, the landmark decision of Obergefell v
In so holding, the Court recognized marriage as being an institution of “both continuity and change,” and, as a consequence, recent shifts in public attitudes respecting gay individuals and more specifically same-sex marriage necessarily informed the Court’s conceptualization of the right to marry.
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 its meaning.
The identification and protection of fundamental rights is an enduring part of the judicial duty to interpret the Constitution. No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.
Legal advocates must continue leveraging substantive due process and equal protection principles to challenge discriminatory laws.