The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Prelude to Social Destruction

Posted on | June 27, 2015 | 129 Comments

“Politics is downstream from culture,” Andrew Breitbart often said. This was why I spent Thursday writing 4,000 words — “Let’s Bring Back Guilt and Shame” — in preparation for the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage which, as anyone who had been paying attention could have predicted, was a 5-4 decision with Justice Kennedy as the decisive vote. What we may discern from reading Justice Kennedy’s ruling is the same thing we discern from reading vulgar expressions of “gay pride” on Tumblr blogs. In both instances, we are confronted by irrational sentiment that not only refuses to recognize the potential for harmful social consequences, but which further insists that opponents are motivated by ignorance and prejudice. The Obergefell decision is not so much a legal argument as it is an accusation of bigotry against American society, an indictment of a nation that imposed a “demeaning” stigma on homosexuals. The decision declares that “marriage is a keystone of the Nation’s social order” (p. 4) before proceeding to declare that this social order must be destroyed because . . . well, why exactly?

There is no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle . . .

(What principle? Never mind. Justice Kennedy’s on a roll now.)

. . . yet same-sex couples are denied the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage . . .

(You see that, in Justice Kennedy’s enlightened mind, the “benefits” of marriage are supplied by government, rather than being intrinsic to the nature of marriage.)

. . . and are consigned to an instability many opposite-sex couples would find intolerable. . . .

(How dare you “consign” them to “instability,” you haters!)

It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society . . .

(They’re locked out of the institution — by haters!)

. . . for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage.

(My wife has “transcendent purposes” for me to take out the garbage.)

The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.

What can anyone say in reply to such a lecture, except to wonder how or why this alleged “inconsistency . . . is now manifest” in a way it was not manifest at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted and ratified by legislators who never so much as hinted any intention to alter the definition of marriage? Quite obviously, what is at the heart of this specious reasoning is a determination that gay people must be granted access, via marriage, to that “constellation of benefits” of which Justice Kennedy spoke. That is to say, insofar as the Welfare State doles out taxpayer dollars to straight people because of marriage, gay people must also be cut in for their share of the government-provided loot, and who cares what the larger consequences may be? We may expect, for example, that this will hasten the bankruptcy of Social Security as gay “widows” qualify for survivors benefits, but it is clear that Justice Kennedy would never pay heed to any such practical concern.

“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. . . . The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
— Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting

Equality with a capital E and Progress with a capital P are the inspirational touchstones of Obergefell. The past is a museum full of obsolete prejudices, where ideas that “may long have seemed natural and just” are dismissed as inferior to the ideas of our Enlightened Arbiters of Social Justice, these robed judicial eminences who are authorized to lecture us about the central meaning of fundamental rights. We can read the Constitution the same as they can, but only they are endowed with the extraordinary insight necessary to find “manifest” there a “principle” which had hitherto escaped our feeble perception.

The quasi-religious devotion to Equality and Progress that animates Obergefell moved Justice Kennedy to a mood of poetic rapture that reaches its ecstatic climax in his conclusion:

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.

One imagines the pages being stained and stuck together after Justice Kennedy finished writing that paragraph. Then he smoked a cigarette, got dressed in a hurry, put a $100 bill on the night stand and left quietly, while the Constitution cried herself to sleep.

About 20 years ago, when liberals began their push for gay marriage, it struck me as an absurd idea. I’m sure most other Americans felt the same way about it, and the social conservatives who took it seriously at the time seemed like hysterical alarmists. Certainly if anyone had told me, circa 1995, that we would reach this point so quickly, I would not have believed them, for I simply could not imagine that we would ever reach this point at all. Trusting in the basic common sense of the American people, I underestimated the persuasive power of the media and the entertainment industry, which have been playing the role of cheerleaders at the LGBT pep rally for so long. Also, I underestimated the extent to which the liberal gospel of Progress and Equality had taken root in the minds of people who, wishing to avoid serious thought about politics and social order, were content to go along with the crowd.

Conscientious people did not want to make themselves unpopular by resisting too loudly this lemming-herd stampede toward the cliff. If you do not wish gay people to be “condemned to live in loneliness” — note well Justice Kennedy’s accusatory implication that opponents are engaged in wanton cruelty — then you must Do Exactly What They Say and Give Them Exactly What They Demand. Thus we arrived at a 21st-century cultural Munich, where marriage was the Sudetenland.

Do you suspect that this will not be the totalitarians’ Final Demand? Well, you’re just a hateful homophobe, aren’t you?

What next? Ace of Spades ponders this briefly:

Now come the knock-on cases, where they ban federal funding of religious schools that don’t recognize gay marriage.

This is obvious enough, and there are many more equally obvious ramifications of Obergefell. The angry LGBT mob, full of destructive rage, will seize the whip they’ve been handed by the Supreme Court and employ it to inflict their sadistic revenge on America.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.





 

Category: Gays, Marriage, Supreme Court

Comments

129 Responses to “A Prelude to Social Destruction”

  1. Adobe_Walls
    June 27th, 2015 @ 8:10 pm

    There are always winners and losers, and you may be correct. Of course you may be incorrect and have the courage of your convictions. Unintended consequences can be a bitch.

  2. NeoWayland
    June 27th, 2015 @ 8:23 pm

    Then why was it necessary to make marriage “legal” in the first place?

    Remember this was the same era that gave us the 16th, 17th, and 18th Amendments.

    Also remember that one of the main reasons for marriage licenses was so they could be denied to certain people. Those laws weren’t changed until SCOTUS ruled in 1967.

  3. Measure For Measure
    June 27th, 2015 @ 8:40 pm

    Guy at the “Shark tank” conservative site says Obama demeans his office by having rainbowpalooza on the WH.

    http://tinyurl.com/qzz7m5u

  4. gaylib
    June 27th, 2015 @ 8:44 pm

    What? From the pitter patter of your wittle feet stomping? Stick to reviewing pulp porno, freak.

  5. Lamprotatia
    June 27th, 2015 @ 8:52 pm

    Sure, they’ll try. That’s why we have to gather our resources and fight back as long as we can. Fortunately that’s still decided on a state level, so it will take many expensive and rigorous battles for them to defeat homeschooling completely, or a complete coup in how education is handled in this country that will anger other people for other reasons too.

  6. Gunga
    June 27th, 2015 @ 9:12 pm

    Optimist!

  7. trangbang68
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:12 pm

    Well, the right honorable Mr. Kennedy bemoans that our poor lavender neighbors are denied the bliss of the breeders.

    I know amongst our cultural and intellectual betters, the mention of God is sure to bring our their H.L. Mencken quotes and Dorothy Parker witticisms, but let’s consider what the old boy says before we put Him to bed.

    Hebrews 13:4 says:

    Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

    There’s no blessing on the baby mamas, the serial adulturers, the sodomites, the baby rapers, the sheep abusers and the rest of the carnival freaks in the USA. The court will never change that.

  8. trangbang68
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:13 pm

    that was before she met Huma

  9. trangbang68
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:21 pm

    I don’t know. AIDS, gay bowel syndrome, drug resistant syphilis, and a host of other benefits of sodomy may well determine who has the last laugh. This heterosexual ain’t got no time for “flailing and wailing” I pity people who destroy themselves with depravity.

  10. trangbang68
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:24 pm

    don’t project your own mannerisms on others

  11. Daniel Freeman
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:25 pm

    You mad, bore?

  12. DeadMessenger
    June 27th, 2015 @ 10:26 pm

    You’re right about that, but I think when they do, the results are not going to be what anybody expected. We live in interesting times.

  13. HouseofSuffering
    June 27th, 2015 @ 11:37 pm

    “sheep abusers” are we impugning the Welsh, now?

  14. Daniel Freeman
    June 27th, 2015 @ 11:54 pm

    Please tell me that was Photoshopped.

  15. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:08 am

    Nobody steps on a chuch in my town!

  16. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:56 am

    I may not agree with what you have to say; and since you and your ilk take obvious glee in trampling my rights whenever and however you can; I will not raise a finger, or my voice, or even an eyebrow, if and when your ilk is targeted by our common enemy.

    Your ilk really needs to stop provoking them and practice more restrained, responsible speech.

  17. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 4:10 am

    You drove the only one who could convince us to stand up for you and your ilk from the public square.

  18. Daniel Freeman
    June 28th, 2015 @ 4:55 am

    I’m not on Twitter, but I’m thinking that #MarriageRegistration needs to trend. At this point, I only see negative benefit to the public from having the government issue marriage licenses, instead of just registering marriages after the fact like it used to do.

  19. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 6:04 am

    Good reply, you might be cool. Are you on board with the all-female Ghostbusters reboot?

  20. Quartermaster
    June 28th, 2015 @ 7:23 am

    Looks like it was. But I’m sure they feel that way.

  21. Jimi Hendrix
    June 28th, 2015 @ 8:11 am

    Everyone’s ilk fades into the pages of history. Did you not realise that? You’ll be called ignorant and hateful too eventually. We were the golden-children of our day, now it’s you, next it will be someone else, don’t pin your hopes on fleeting fashion.

  22. Brett
    June 28th, 2015 @ 8:48 am

    2+2=5, comrades. And don’t you forget it.

    Criminy, all three branches of the federal government cheat. As far as I am concerned, none of them has any legitimacy at all, especially considering I have no trust in an honest vote or count.

    Oh, power they have, but might makes not right, despite the left making that their first moral and intellectual principle.

    I can only hope that more join me in this renunciation.

  23. Fred Beloit
    June 28th, 2015 @ 9:14 am

    Glandis Maximus, I don’t have any problem with sticking one’s yok into another guy’s yak in privacy and harming nobody, but what’s up with being “proud” about it to the point of having a parade, and now turning the White House into The Rainbow Room over it?

    The Supreme Court as conceived by libruls has long passed its usefulness, decency, and logic. That treacherous house of cards needs to be reshuffled and dealt anew. This country elected a Republican Congress to put a stop to this kind of nonsense. When will they get going on the assignment we gave them?

  24. Matt_SE
    June 28th, 2015 @ 9:42 am

    Denounce myself? Ha!
    #TruthWins

  25. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 10:29 am

    It was made legal for purposes of enforcement, such as for protection of children.

    And marriage licenses are still being denied to people, such as the underaged or to multiple partners or to incestuous couples. You know, discrimination based on sexual orientation. But thanks to Kennedy’s Facebook post-as-SCOTUS opinion, not for long.

  26. NeoWayland
    June 28th, 2015 @ 11:30 am

    Pace vs. Alabama, 1883.

    For decades that was the justification for states to deny marriage to “undesirables.”

    Once you make start making distinctions, it’s hard to step back. My own state didn’t repeal it’s mixed marriage laws until 1962. At one point Hidus and Filipinos were added to the “banned” list.

  27. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 11:53 am

    So let’s cut the shit – you’re on-board with socially/legally approving under-aged or polygamous or incestuous marriages. Hell, throw in bigamy. After all, if marriage is just a contract for the purchase and sale of widgets, I can buy widgets from more than one source.

    If you are not “down” with this, explain WHY. They are surely considered “undesireables”, and Kennedy’s decision is broad enough to permit them all to marry (by marry I mean be legal recognized as such for enforcement purposes), all without any need for general social acceptance of any of their relationships. It’s about individual rights and dignity now, and individuality is “subjective”. So now marriage is subjective.

    You CAN NOT change such a fundamental aspect of marriage as the sexes involved and not leave each and every other element of the definition in the cross-hairs. Thus, monogamy will be first up to remove, so if you and your spouse are actually faithful to each other YOU will become a hater simply for thinking that makes your marriage better (given the promiscuity of gay males), so better keep that opinion to yourself.

    Now you see how their “marriage” affects yours?

    As the homosexuals have shown us, you better fall in lock-step with their views or face social ruin, so good luck looking the other way to incest, polygamy, etc. but still harboring disapproval of it.

  28. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 12:04 pm

    I guess you’re not cool, and I bet you’re mad about that female Ghostbusters reboot too. Nobody’s trampling on your rights, and when you have the same views on gays as violent Islamists, you should reconsider your position.

  29. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 12:23 pm

    We’re hateful cretins? You enjoy our misfortune?

    You came here specifically to engage in uncivil speech, to deliver abuse, to provoke not thoughful duscussion but an angry emotional response. You are a buster.

    FUCK OFF.

  30. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 12:31 pm

    Thaaaat’s more like it. 😀

    This whole website run by white supremacist Stacy McCain is a monument to uncivil speech, no matter how much fancy language it’s dressed up in.

  31. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 12:53 pm

    I do not have the same views on gays as violent islamists. You will learn that over time. The islamist will trample your flag, blow up your parades and slit your throats. Oh, well, pass the popcorn…

    We tried to live together but you are having none of it. Reap what you have sown.

    Do not blame Christ or his believers for your predicament. We believe in forebearance of judgement, turning the other cheek, loving our enemy. We really, truly, try to with all of our might to obey Jesus.

    Homosexual sex is a sin. Heterosexual sex outside of its reproductive (life-embuing) fuction is a sin. Marriage, like most well-functioning institutions, harnesses selfish behavior for societal benefit.

    Real marriage i.e. A union between a man and woman, is miraculous; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of new human life.

    Marriage institutionalizes these union and these unions only because only these unions can produce the next generation men and women.

    We will produce soldiers to defend our values. Good luck creating your own soldiers.

  32. NeoWayland
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:04 pm

    Okay, cards on the table.

    I support consenting adults choosing marriage.

    That’s it.

    As for the rest, I can’t see how it’s any of my business. Or yours. Or the government’s business.

    The only reason why alternative marriage is an “attack” on Christianity is because certain Christians managed to get one interpretation of marriage made into law.

    Used selectively of course. Only to keep “undesirables” from being married.

    The real answer is to get government out of the marriage business.

  33. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:08 pm

    It’s not a zero-sum game. Many of those you produce to defend your values will instead defend ours. How do you think gay marriage got to 60% support? A combination of generational change (one third) and people changing their minds (two thirds). And gay couples will be raising their own soldiers anyway, through adoption and surrogate mothers (or sperm donors for lesbian couples). And finally, soldiers of the United States will defend the laws of the United States no matter their personal values.

  34. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:09 pm

    Yeah, soak it up. The reservoir of fellowship is emptying faster than you think.

    Your little bolshevik movement is succeeding. But can you control the forces you seek to unleash?

    When the islamists figure out that we no longer value the bonds of citizenship, that we don’t consider you our brothers and sisters anymore, that an attack on you is not an attack on us, that we won’t stick out our necks to defend you anymore….

    Our side will defend Pamela Geller et all to the best of our ability. Your side can fend for itself. If I know they’re coming for one of you, I won’t say or do anything to stop them.

    “Shrug”

  35. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:21 pm

    You’re a Pamela Geller fanboy? Now I KNOW you’re not cool.

    Oh yeah, don’t get to cocky about yourselves. We don’t need the help of a marginalized and ever-shrinking group of haters who will soon be relegated the ideological ghetto like the Stormfront types. Gay marriage supporters are at 60% after rising 2.5% per year for the past 12 years, and the trend is ongoing. Scoreboard, baby.

  36. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:32 pm

    Your argument is obtuse.

    I don’t doubt your ability to spit plates for a time; but you can’t keep them going indefinitely.

    It will all come crashing down. Gays don’t give a shit about marriage, they just want to stick it to the breeders. You know it and I know it.

    We have logic, tradition and biology on our side. You have mental illness and venereal disease on yours.

  37. Prime Director
    June 28th, 2015 @ 1:47 pm

    Pamela Geller is standing up to YOUR enemies, enemies you and your ilk are too weak and cowardly to confront.

    Her enemies will come for you and your ilk after she is gone.

    You think you were outraged when that little old lady refused to bake your a cake? Wait until they start throwing your friends off the Chrystler Building.

    Maybe they’ll let you live. Maybe they’ll just make you wear a pink badge at all times.

  38. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 2:35 pm

    “I support consenting adults choosing marriage.That’s it.As for the rest, I can’t see how it’s any of my business. Or yours. Or the government’s business”.

    Then you support it. That’s the “pro-choice argument” – “I think its the murder of a child, but it’s not my kid so it’s not my business”. It will be your business when and if your son and daughter decide to shack up because the local college gender studies professor is teaching the normalcy of incest. Good luck being laissez faire then when it stops being “someone else’s business” and comes home.

    And it’s absolutely my business when those relationships dress themselves up and demand benefits that weren’t intended for them. Gays can now get Social Security spousal death benefits. Same with govt. employee pensions. That won’t jeopardize their solvency, huh?

    Take it a step further – there is no “gay marriage”. It is and always was “same sex marriage”. Same. Sex. No need or requirement to prove sexual intercourse. So why can’t I marry my brother, who I love, to share our dignity and oh, my health care benefits? No sex involved, and even if there was, that’s none of YOUR business. Now cough up that money via your premiums and deductibles.

    You place so much importance on “adult” and “consent” when all those are are legal terms that can be redefined. Ya know, like marriage. After all, I’m sure some Christians just got one interpretation of “adult” and “consent” into law, huh? Adult can mean 21, or 18, or 16 depending on the state. A 12 year old girl can obtain an abortion in Florida w/o parents knowledge or consent. Then she should be able to have sex at 12. Ta-da – lowered the age of consent.

    And if we teach kids about sex at earlier ages, they will be more knowledgeable of it, and we can justify lowering the consent age further.

    How about that 10 year old her parents are putting through
    sex reassignment. At 10. Before puberty. And yet no CYS officials are taking her from her parents. But let that same kid run unattended in her front yard and your getting a jail cell. Do me a favor a Google David Reimer and Dr. Money. Then get back to me on “none of my business”.

    See what redefining fundamental concepts results in, legally? The “slippery slope” you mock is very real, and its called “legal precedent”.

    “The only reason why alternative marriage is an “attack” on Christianity is because certain Christians managed to get one interpretation of
    marriage made into law.”

    I never once referred to Christianity. I myself am not Christian. I referred to a govt.’s interest in supporting the boilogical realtionship that results in creation of healthy new life for the purposes of propagating the species and for creating a stable citizen/taxpayer. If your relation does not and will not result in that, there should be NO financial incentive for it. A whole of domestic relations law, etc. is based on that “one intepretation” and now a whole bunch of new intepretations are coming to the table with a hand out.

    “Get government out of the marriage business” you say? OK, but that also means never taking any marital dispute to the courts for resolution. Otherwise the court has to “recognize” your marriage legally for enforcement purposes. So before you spout that bumpersticker slogan, think it through.

    We are deeply involved in a culture war. 15 years ago I couldn’t have given two shits about gays, and bore them no ill will. After watching case law, morality, rational thought and standards of healthy behavior inverted on its head all to celebrate deviancy, with the final blow being 5 unelected judges shitting all over the Constituion, state constitutions, legal precedent, and the will of the people, has made me hostile to them. Way to go! If you think people like me are going to be held to task for the actions of Christians, et al., just because we refuse to be lobotomized by our freaky “betters”, you better damn well believe people like you are going to have your faces rubbed in this shit when deviancy like pedophilia are mainstreamed.

    Their are no conscientious objectors in this culture war. The left won’t let you be one – you will be made to care. You will be made to applaud.

  39. NeoWayland
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:13 pm

    “And it’s absolutely my business when those relationships dress themselves up and demand benefits that weren’t intended for them.”

    There’s the issue. The “select” get benefits.

    If you want to make this an All Or Nothing Culture war than you’ve already lost, just as the radical progressives have.

    And for the exact same reason.

  40. robertstacymccain
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:15 pm

    Your little bolshevik movement is succeeding. But can you control the forces you seek to unleash?

    They don’t care. All they care about is destroying civilization, because Mama never let them play football, or whatever. The destructive impulses of the Left are never rational, but are usually rooted in some profound sense of personal hurt, which is why they always lash out so hatefully at anyone who disagrees with them.

  41. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:20 pm

    How have we stuck it to the breeders? As much as it would amuse me, heterosexual marriage hasn’t been banned — yet. MWAHAHAHAHAAA!

  42. Divorcing Marriage
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:20 pm

    […] have little to add to the trepidations and objections of better analysts than I, except […]

  43. giantslor
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:22 pm

    Yeah, the only thing standing between gays and Islamist terrorists is Pamela Geller. Good one.

  44. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:22 pm

    Ah, the argument of the moral relativist. Confusing behavior with inate immutable characteristics. Believing that dIscrimination of ANY kind is bad. Each relationship is just as good or acceptible as another. That makes EVERYTHING relative. That type of society cannot endure. So it won’t.

  45. robertstacymccain
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:26 pm

    You get very close to the real point here. People who don’t really believe in anything except abstract concepts (i.e., “Equality”), and who do not have the personal stake in the future one gets by raising, are notably indifferent to the consequences of what happens to Other People’s Children. One notices that the affluent in particular tend to be convinced that Bad Things will never happen to them or their children, because money offers a degree of cushion against hardship. Yet as our culture becomes decadent and civilization tumbles toward anarchy, we discover that this immunity to harm is exposed as the illusion it really always was.

    So far, my wife and I have been able to shield our children from the worst of it, but what about our grandchildren? What about future generations of our descendants whom we will likely not live to see? What will happen when radical LGBT activists rewrite the curricula in every school and exercise veto power in every state and local school board? Who will we protect children then? It is a very short-sighted person who does not fear for the future, given the current trajectory of our culture.

  46. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:31 pm

    Exactly this. And by the way, big fan of your work. Very few people are addressing the issues that you do with your level of professionalism. You may not realize it, but your work in desperately needed and greatly appreciated.

  47. NeoWayland
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:45 pm

    Yep, call me a dreamer. I don’t think it’s a right unless the other guy has it too.

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    You know, little things like that.

  48. trangbang68
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:51 pm

    keep dreaming, fool. If you are so delirious to think that 60% of Americans will go to the mat to defend your right to pull the train at a bathhouse.
    Pam Geller would bitchslap a gelded little punk like you into next Tuesday.

  49. trangbang68
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:54 pm

    what’s the cause of the laughter, AIDS induced dementia or are you just naturally a lunatic?

  50. Saltyron1977
    June 28th, 2015 @ 3:59 pm

    Exactly right. Gays had the same right I have as a straight single male. They just didn’t want to use it, just like me. So they wanted a NEW right, a new definition of marriage, a subjective right redefined by each person. I’m not advocating to change marriage so I can get those benefits as a single person.

    I don’t have a right to marry the same sex, neither do they. So there was no denial of equal protection. Just as I don’t have a right to marry my sister or a dog or 4 people. Just because they WANT something doesn’t make it a right. Otherwise a pursuit of happiness can be used to justify all manner of actions and horrors. That isn’t dreaming, that’s delusion.