It's been a great week in America, with the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare and making gay marriage legal across the land. I posted my optimistic prediction about the Obamacare ruling a few days ago, and I'm happy to see that things worked out even better than expected! Thanks in particular are due to Anthony Kennedy, who joined the majority opinion on Obamacare and wrote the majority opinion on same-sex marriage.
The concluding section of Kennedy's same-sex marriage opinion is beautiful. I like how the lovely prose of the first paragraph supports the final sentences' commanding legal language.
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. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
