Justice Ginsberg on Gay Marriage

[Cole Parker]

This makes a whole lot of sense. From THINKPROGRESS:

Justice Ginsburg Eviscerates The Case Against Marriage Equality In Just Five Sentences

BY IAN MILLHISER POSTED ON

APRIL 29, 2015 AT 8:54 AM

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"Justice Ginsburg Eviscerates The Case Against Marriage Equality In Just Five Sentences"

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CREDIT: AP PHOTO/JESSICA HILL

During Tuesday’s marriage equality arguments in the Supreme Court, several of the Court’s conservative members suggested that same-sex couples should not be given equal marriage rightsbecause these couples have not enjoyed those rights for most of the past. As Justice Antonin Scalia summed up this argument, “for millennia, not a single society” supported marriage equality, and that somehow exempted same-sex couples from the Constitution’s promise of equal protection of the law.

Not long after her conservative colleagues raised this argument, however, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained exactly why marriage was long understood to be incompatible with homosexuality in just five sentences:

[same-sex couples] wouldn’t be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.

Justice Ginsburg’s point was that, until surprisingly recently, the legal institution of marriage was defined in terms of gender roles. According to Sir William Blackstone, an eighteenth century English jurist whose works are still frequently cited today to explain the common law principles we inherited from our former colonial rulers, “[t]he very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.” As late as 1887, fully one third of the states did not permit women to control their earnings. And married women could not even withhold consent to sex with their husband until shockingly recently.

Under the common law, “by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up in this kind unto her husband,” and this consent was something “she cannot retract.” The first successful prosecution in the United States of a husband who raped his wife did not occur until the late 1970s.

So American marriage law, and the English law that it was derived from, presumed that the wife was both financially and sexual subservient to the husband. In a world where marriage is defined as a union between a dominant man and a submissive woman, each fulfilling unique gender roles, the case for marriage discrimination is clear. How can both the dominant male role and the submissive female role be carried out in a marital union if the union does not include one man and one woman? This, according to Justice Ginsburg, is why marriage was understood to exclude same-sex couples for so many centuries.

But marriage is no longer bound to antiquated gender roles. And when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage discrimination breaks down.

[Cynus]

That's beautiful.

[dude]

Justice Ginzburg is clearly the most brilliant mind on SCOTUS!

[DesDownunder]

I was amazed at the Justices' seeming lack of knowledge on the question of ancient same sex marriages.

I'll just leave this here for your perusal:

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/50-weirdest-and-coolest-facts-lgbti-history200215

[Cole Parker]

I agree. Ginsburg is brilliant, and if Thomas and Scalia ignore her, it simply shows how out of touch they are with the modern world and that they value their conservatives sentiments more than equality for mankind.

C