The Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage in a 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The opinion holds that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to issue a marriage license to same-sex couples. All four dissenting justices wrote an invididual dissent. Justice Kennedy voted with the liberal block.
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family," Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "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.”
