A legal history lesson in the same-sex marriage debate
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court processed another ruling on the question of same-sex marriage. It let stand a federal judge’s decision ordering South Carolina to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That makes 34 states that grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples—a few by way of democratic means, most by way of judicial orders.
That’s a remarkable number in just 10 years’ time, since Massachusetts became the first state in which courts overturned a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. But the judicial shift goes back almost 50 years to a 1967 case that proponents of redefining marriage are using to secure victory. It hadn’t occurred to any serious legal scholar at the time that a case affirming the plain meaning of marriage would wind up as the basis for an argument affirming the opposite.
A landmark decision almost half a century ago that...
