Good point. But I do not judge his argument, here, based upon his overall credibility. I find the argument persuasive no matter who makes it. I might add that the cases are very different. The health care act is a major legislative initiative, debated by the country and enacted by Congress, but challenged on the basis of certain clauses. In THIS case, to overturn it would have been placing the justices foursquare against the democratic process. (They should do so anyway, of course, if the unconstitutionality of the law is clearly evident.) But the decision to foreclose debate on the same-sex marriage issue puts the justices in the position on mandating a staggering historic change in the very way that human relationships and societies have been conceived. The country, and the states, were in the process of this debate, but the advocates of same-sex marriage wanted to bypass that whole process by getting five judges to decide not LAW but a revolution in our way of thinking, our way of life, and our very conception of equality. Taking the responsibility greatly worried the dissenters, and they are right to be shocked and disturbed by what five members of the court did...

Laws are supposed to protect the rights of the individual, not herd people into a collectivist "benefiting society". The government should not be involved in marriage as a cultural matter at all, only, in this context, in defining what legal rights people are assumed to have in permanent relationships, including such matters as tax law, which in the past has been assumed to follow from the traditional cultural institution of marriage. But the counter-culture demands precisely a government moral and legally enforced sanction imposing their social beliefs and cramming them down the throats of everyone -- they explicitly rejected the idea of recognized "civil unions" that don't have to be consistent with concepts like marriage. Here we have not only the Supreme Court assuming the power to legislate, but worse to legislate the meaning of concepts on political grounds on behalf of radical pressure groups..

I agree that Justice Alito's arguments are telling. I also tend to agree with an argument by Justice Thomas: [Liberty has] "long been understood as individual freedom from government action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement." "Whether we define 'liberty' as locomotion or freedom from governmental action more broadly, petitioners have in no way been deprived of it."

Emphatically, there is no human right to legalized marriage. There is a human right to enter into a relationship, including a sexual relationship, with any one of consenting age, who will accept you. There is a right to establish a long-term contractual relationship with any such person. There is a right to perform a ceremony, or have a church perform a ceremony, to sanctify that relationship. There is a right to have or to adopt children. These are all matters of freedom of action: freedom to pursue your values and make your choices without constraint by government. This is liberty.

But what petitioners asked the Supreme Court to sanction was a civil right to have government take a positive action on your behalf: to give you a marriage license, register your marriage, and recognize and protect it as legal. No one has a natural right to this; the "right" sought was the supposed right to be treated equally by government. And thus the reference, by the approving majority, to the "equal protection" amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

And it is true that individuals in the same circumstances and same condition are guaranteed equal protection--treatment--by the Constitution. But the whole screaming-out-loud question is whether or not individuals of the same sex ARE in the same circumstances and conditions, as regards requesting the government grant of a marriage license, as two citizens of opposite sexes and of the age of consent.

No government, or people, or moral or legal thinkers in the history of the human race, before about 20 years ago, even conceived that two individuals of the same sex were equal, in terms of marriage, as a man and woman. Marriage, through all history, and worldwide, meant between a man and woman with the understanding that they, and only they, could procreate and maintain a union best suited to rearing children.

The questioning of this in the name of egalitarianism, fighting "oppression," dismantling the "power structure" is a recent product of Post-Modernist philosophy. But that is another long post.

One can equally assert that religion hijacked marriage. Greece had gay marriage in the 5th century B.C.

I agree with Justice Thomas's principle, but not how he has applied it. "Legal marriage" simply means expecting government to treat your group as a family. This is a basic right -- a negative right, like the ones he recognizes -- and should be a given.

But while I agree with the outcome of this case, I do not agree with how the Court arrived there. The 14th Amendment was never intended to address discrimination for reasons other than race, color, or previous slave status, and does not in fact forbid other kinds, nor authorize Congress to forbid other kinds. If it did, then Congress would never have had any reason to pass the Equal Rights amendment for women (which they did, though it wasn't ratified by enough states).

Lol. You've obviously never read Cosmopolitan magazine or picked up a Kama Sutra manual ;)