Here we’ll describe just what the Court said and didn’t, what it got
wrong, what that means in practice, and where it leaves the fight for a
sound marriage culture
Here’s the least reported fact about yesterday’s rulings on marriage:
the Supreme Court refused to give Ted Olson and David Boies, the
lawyers suing to overturn Prop 8, what they wanted. The Court refused to
redefine marriage for the entire nation. The Court refused to
"discover" a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Citizens and
their elected representatives remain free to discuss, debate, and vote
about marriage policy in all fifty states. Citizens and their elected
representatives still have the right to define marriage in civil law as
the union of one man and one woman.
And we should continue doing so. Already, in the wake of yesterday’s
ruling, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana has called on his state to pass a
constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a
woman. Marriage matters for children, for civil society, and for limited
government. Marriage is the institution that unites a man and a woman
as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children that their
union produces. And that’s why the government is in the marriage
business. Not because it cares about adult romance, but because it cares
about the rights of children.
If you believe, as we do, in the importance to children and to
society of the marriage-based family, then of course you were hoping for
different results in yesterday’s marriage cases. But you probably also
put your trust in the institutions of civil society—in that vast arena
between man and state which is the real stage for human development. And
in that case, you never expected a court of law to do our work for us,
to rescue a marriage culture that has been wounded for decades by
cohabitation, out-of-wedlock child-bearing, and misguided policies like
no-fault divorce. Your only question at 10:00 AM yesterday was whether
the Supreme Court would leave us the political and cultural space to
rebuild that culture, or get in the way.
The answer was that the Court would leave us some space—for now. Five justices in United States v. Windsor have
seen fit to put the republic on notice. While coy on state marriage
laws, they have held that we the people—through overwhelming majorities
in Congress and a Democratic President—somehow violated the Constitution
in enacting the Defense of Marriage Act.
Here we’ll describe just what the Court said and didn’t, what it got
wrong, what that means in practice, and where it leaves the fight for a
sound marriage culture.
What Happened in Windsor and Perry
In United States v. Windsor, the Court heard a
challenge to Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA),
which defined marriage as a male-female union for federal purposes
created in federal law. Justice Kennedy and the four more liberal
justices—Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg—struck down that
section. Dissents were filed by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia,
and Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas.
In the second case, Perry v. Hollingsworth, the Court
considered Proposition 8, the referendum in which California citizens
amended their constitution to preserve conjugal marriage in state law.
The California attorney general, normally responsible for defending such
laws, refused in this case, so Prop 8’s proponents stepped in. But the
Court ruled that they had no standing—no legal right—to do so. Chief
Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Scalia,
Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Justice Kennedy dissented, joined by
Justices Alito, Thomas, and Sotomayor.
What That Does—and Doesn’t—Mean
The Supreme Court did not strike down all of DOMA, just Section 3. It
left intact Section 2, which prevents the states from being forced to
recognize other states’ same-sex marriages. This leads to the broader
point that not a single justice said anything against the validity of
any state marriage policy, including state conjugal marriage laws. That
means, of course, that not a single justice voted to strike down Prop 8.
Instead, the Perry majority ordered the Ninth Circuit Court to set aside (“vacate”) its own ruling against Prop 8.
That leaves us with some confusion as to the status of Judge Vaughn
Walker’s district court decision that ruled against Prop 8. Some
scholars think Walker’s
decision must be vacated, too. Each same-sex couple seeking to marry in
California would then have to sue for a special kind of court relief,
applicable only to that couple. Others think that Judge Walker’s
decision would stand, but they debate whether it would apply to all
state officials or only the county clerks named in the suit. Governor
Jerry Brown, for his part, has directed
all county clerks to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses. This
will surely be challenged in state court by the proponents of Prop 8.
Trouble Spots
The Court ruled that Prop 8 proponents were not the right party to
bring the suit. Wherever vague and conflicting standing doctrine points,
its application here eviscerated the California referendum process.
That process was designed to let citizens pass laws, and amend their
constitution, to check and balance government officials. If those same
officials can effectively veto provisions of the state constitution by
refusing to enforce and then refusing to defend them, the point of the
referendum process is defeated.
Meanwhile, it is hard to criticize the basis of the DOMA case because
it is hard even to say what that basis is. The opinion begins with a
learned reflection on how family law has historically (but not
exclusively) been left to states. Yet it refuses to strike DOMA down
just on that ground. After all, DOMA leaves state family law intact as
ever. It controls only how the federal government allocates federal
money and benefits when it comes to marriage. Congress can’t impose on
the states in this matter, to be sure; but then why would the states be
able to impose on Congress?
The Court also doesn’t rest its decision just on equal protection
principles, though these too are discussed. If equality required
Congress to cover same-sex partnerships with its marriage-related laws,
wouldn’t the same be true of the states? Yet the majority claims to
reach no decision on the latter.
Finally, the Court doesn’t just rely on the principle that the
government can’t deny liberty without due process. On the Court’s own
accounting, that rule protects substantive rights only when they are
deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions. But as of 13 years
ago, no jurisdiction on our planet, much less in our nation, had
enacted same-sex civil marriage.
So if not federalism, or equality, or due process, then what? What is
the basis for the Court’s ruling? As Justice Scalia points out, the
Court itself won’t say. It discusses each of these principles before
refusing to rely squarely on any. As for how they might stretch,
multiply, merge, or pile up to support the Court’s holding anyway,
several theories have arisen. But even some who cheer the decision have called its reasoning less than coherent or satisfying.
Justice Kennedy, for his part, is just sure the Constitution prevents
the federal government from treating opposite- and same-sex state
marriages differently. All he knows, in other words, is that Section 3
of DOMA must go.
In fact, we would have been better off had he stopped there. DOMA, he
goes on to insist, must have been motivated by a “bare desire to harm,”
or “to disparage and to injure.” Its sole purpose and effect is to
“impose inequality,” to deny “equal dignity,” to “humiliate.” He infers
all this from a few passages in its legislative history about defending
traditional morality and the institution of traditional marriage, from
its effects, and from the act’s title. Most importantly—and
scandalously, given his obligations as a judge—Kennedy does so with
nothing more than passing reference to arguments made for DOMA in
particular, and conjugal marriage in general. How else could his
reasoning leap from the people’s wish to support a certain vision of
marriage, to their alleged desire to harm and humiliate those otherwise
inclined?
The effect of this refusal to engage counterarguments is the
elevation of a rash accusation to the dignity of a legal principle:
DOMA’s supporters—including, one supposes, 342 representatives, 85
senators, and President Clinton—must have been motivated by ill will.
The Heart of the Problem—and Solution
The bottom line? The defense of conjugal marriage matters now more
than ever. It won't be long before new challengers come. But whether
they succeed may depend on how vigorously the democratic debate is
joined by what Justice Alito describes in his clear-eyed dissent.
In his DOMA dissent, Justice Alito goes out of his way to frame the central issue of both cases:
They involve, he writes, a contest between two visions of marriage—what
he calls the "conjugal" and "consent-based" views. He cites our book
as exemplifying the conjugal view of marriage as (in his summary) a
“comprehensive, exclusive, permanent union that is intrinsically ordered
to producing children.” He cites others, like Jonathan Rauch, for the
idea that marriage is a certain commitment marked by emotional union.
And he explains that the Constitution is silent on which of these
substantive, morally controversial visions of marriage is correct. So
the Court, he says, should decline to decide; it should defer to
democratic debate.
The Court is likelier to defer to democratic debate if it believes there’s a genuine debate to defer to. If the conjugal view’s supporters are instead cowed into silence, or convinced to forfeit on the ground that loss is “inevitable” anyway, five justices will see no obstacle to imposing the consent-based view nationwide.
Never mind that this emotional companionship rationale entails that moms and dads are interchangeable. Never mind that it makes nonsense of other norms of marriage, unable as it is to justify the limits of permanence, exclusivity, or monogamy.
Never mind that by its logic, the law’s “discrimination” against
multiple-partner bonds, too, would embody a “bare desire to harm” those
most satisfied by other bonds.
The point is that by assuming the consent-based view, the majority in
the DOMA decision took sides in the very debate it was claiming to
sidestep out of respect for state sovereignty. Had the justices taken
the trouble even to describe conjugal marriage supporters’ reasons in
their own terms, it would have become obvious that these weren’t bigots
but garden-variety political opponents.
So our first task is to develop and multiply our artistic, pastoral, and reasoned defenses of the conjugal view as the truth about marriage, and to make ever plainer our policy reasons for enacting it. That
will make it more awkward for the justices to apply their
DOMA reasoning in a future challenge to state marriage laws. Only
conjugal marriage supporters can decide—by what they do next—whether the
Court, when it next returns to marriage, will find a policy dispute lively enough to demand its deference.
Our second task is to take a long—and broad—view. Whenever and
however the legal battle is won, our work will have only begun. Despite
the Court’s libels against half their fellow citizens, this debate is
not about “the bare desire to harm” any group. Indeed, for conjugal
marriage supporters it is not, ultimately, about homosexuality at all.
It is about marriage. The proposal to define marriage as nothing more
specific than your top emotional bond is one way to erode its
stabilizing norms, so crucial for family life and the common good.
But it is just one way.
Before same-sex anything was at stake, our society was already busy
dismantling its own foundation, by innovations like no-fault divorce and
by a thousand daily decisions to dishonor the norms of marriage that
make it apt for family life. Atomization results from these forms of
family breakdown—and from the superficially appealing idea that
emotional closeness is all that sets marriage apart, which makes it
gauche to seek true companionship and love in non-marital bonds. Part of
rebuilding marriage will be responding
to that atomization—reaching out to friends and neighbors suffering
broken hearts or homes, or loneliness, whatever the cause. That, too,
will make the conjugal view of marriage shine more brightly as a viable
social option.
In short, winning the legal battle against redefinition is only a
condition of winning the political one. And winning the political one is
only a condition (though necessary) for rebuilding a healthy culture.
Yesterday's most important developments in that broadest struggle, of
course, did not happen at a marble courthouse in Washington, but in a
million minds and hearts and households across the country, as people
chose in ways great and small to honor—or not—the demanding ideals of
marriage and family, and community. As champions of civil society, we
always knew that. Yet it would be naive to deny the law's effect on
those ideals. That's why the courthouse matters—and why we must keep up
our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is
safely beyond judicial overreach.
