What say me? Where do I begin?
The issue of marriage being weighed in our courts (and soon the Supreme Court) is very well in the “afield” of “alignment” of the Constitution. The legality and recognition of marriage in American society is granted by the state. What the state gives or gives not as a right cannot be challenged by popular vote. Privileges, in contrast, carry the requirement of a completion of a set standard of rules. The marriage licensing, in contrast, never carried such rules and requirements until the past 15 years (such afterthought rule additions such as DOMA and the thirty some odd state constitution revisions). When rights create a separate and distinct class of people, it ceases being a right. The Constitution requires judicial review of all laws, actions and “rule making” taken by the Executive and Legislative branches of government, whether federal or state, to be done. So, yes, this is exactly what our courts are for ---to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. If the courts did not involve themselves nearly 50 years ago, the United States would still be an apartheid country.
Second, the only thing that has been traditional in marriage is all the changes forced upon it by religions and governments. It is true that people invented marriage but the invention was not for what you had put forth as “traditional” purpose: procreation. The notion that “...People can love whom they want and live the way they choose, but no one is entitled to redefine a foundational institution of civil society that has existed for centuries...” is a fallacy. People have been marrying one another in a variety of ways and have changed as they went along. If you want “traditional marriage” in the sense of what tradition means, you will marry for purely economic and political reasons. Children, the byproduct of heterosexual unions, were for the purpose of preserving, protecting and proliferating wealth and power. Basically, traditional marriage was for the wealthy and powerful. The purpose of “love,” God,” and “family” and a function of average Joes is, in fact, very recent phenomena impacting marriage, say, for the past 700 years.
Finally, I have researched this topic and the changes to marriage in the United States go much further beyond the addition of same-sex marriages to the institution of marriage. The subject of researched knowledge and understanding is immense. I’ve written a series of Hubs about marriage trying to narrow the focus and hopefully done merely okay with it. Your opinion is not the norm not because its “popular” to think, feel and believe otherwise in contemporary culture, but not the norm because your argument situates itself on the idea that marriage has always been static. The fact is, marriage has changed so many times and in so many ways that the word “traditional” attached to marriage begs the question: which tradition? If a specific tradition is enforced on marriage, is that fair to everyone? Of course not. What marriage has always been is what you, personally and individually, make it.
