You may be aware that the right of same sex couples to marry is coming up for oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States on 28 April 2015.
The case, Obergefell v. Hodges, has been consolidated by the Court with Tanco v. Haslam (Tennessee), DeBoer v. Snyder (Michigan), Bourke v. Beshear (Kentucky), and the Court has posed two questions:
- Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?
- Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?
What you may not know is that SCOTUSblog has extensive commentary and primary documents collected at: Obergefell vs. Hodges. In addition to blog commentary covering all the positions of the parties and others who have filed briefs in this proceeding, there are links to the briefs by the parties and one hundred and fifty-one (151) briefs filed by others.
There will be a lot of loose talk about a decision favoring gay marriage as another Brown v. Board of Education. A favorable decision would legally end another form of narrow mindedness, as it should. However, I don’t think the two cases are comparable in terms of magnitude.
Perhaps because I was born the year Brown was decided and due to the practice of “…all deliberate speed…” in the South, I attended segregated schools until I was in the ninth grade. I won’t bore you will distorted recollections from so long ago but suffice it to say that interest on the debt of Jim Crow and de jure segregation is still being paid by children of all races in the South.
Same sex couples have been discriminated against and that should end, but they are adults, not children. Brown recognized sinning against children and started the nation on a long road to recognize that as well.