Decade in review: Marital norms erode
A decade ago, President Barack Obama affirmed that marriage unites a man and woman. So did 45 states and the federal government. The only states to redefine marriage had done so through activist court rulings or, in 2009, legislative action. At the ballot box, citizens had uniformly voted against redefinition. A majority agreed with Obama.
Then, in 2012, Obama “evolved,” and the Supreme Court took cases involving marriage law. Nothing in the Constitution answered the actual question at hand: What is marriage? The court should have left the issue to the people. But in 2013, it struck down the federal definition of marriage as a male-female union in a 5-4 ruling.
The court also punted on a challenge to a state definition of marriage adopted in a 2008 constitutional referendum by which a majority of Californians — yes, Californians — overturned an activist court. Only in 2015 did the Supreme Court, breaking 5-4 again, redefine marriage for the nation, provoking four irrefutable dissents.
Same-sex marriage advocates told the public that they sought only the “freedom to marry.” Same-sex couples were already free to live as they chose, but legal recognition was about the definition of marriage for all of society. It was about affirmation — by the government and everyone else.
It’s unsurprising that once a campaign that used to cry “live and let live” prevailed, it began working to shut down Catholic adoption agencies and harass evangelical bakers and florists. This shows it was never really about “live and let live” — that was a merely tactical stance.
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