Three Reasons Why It Is Wrong to Assume the Supreme Court Will Redefine Marriage

June 25, 2014

Two more federal courts have now ruled that the natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman violates the U.S. Constitution—a District Court in Indiana, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in a case out of Utah.

There is a growing consensus among the liberal elites that it is “inevitable” that the U. S. Supreme Court will eventually declare a constitutional “right” to marry someone of the same sex. Here are three quick reasons to believe they are wrong:

1) The Court was already asked to declare such a right last year—and it refused. The supposed legal superstars Ted Olson and David Boies teamed up to challenge California’s Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court—but that case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, ended with a whimper instead of a bang. The Court issued a narrow technical ruling that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have legal standing to defend it in Court in place of state officials, who refused to do so. This ruling had the end result of allowing same-sex “marriages” to resume in California, but it established no precedent at all.

If it were clear to a majority of the Court that the U.S. Constitution requires states to allow same-sex “marriages,” it would have been easy enough to declare as much last year. The fact that they did not may indicate at least some reluctance to do so.

2) In the case of U.S. v. Windsor, the Supreme Court did strike down the federal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). However, that decision was based largely on DOMA’s deviation from the tradition of the federal government deferring to state definitions of marriage. That same tradition would suggest that the Court should allow states to continue defining marriage as they choose.

3) When the current flurry of federal court decisions redefining marriage began last year, several of the lower courts involved refused to even issue a stay of their ruling pending appeal. However, the Supreme Court did issue such stays—suggesting that they are not in nearly so much of a rush to get same-sex couples to the altar or the justice of the peace as other judges are.

I’m not making bets or even predictions as to what the Supreme Court will do if and when one of these new cases reaches them. The court has issued bad, unjustified, unprecedented decisions before. I am just pointing out that there is reasonable evidence to suggest that the Court is not eager to overturn the very constitutions of a majority of these United States.

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