Thursday, March 28, 2024

Dear Justice Kennedy: Don’t Shame Traditional Believers

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (photo credit: Steve Rhodes via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (photo credit: Steve Rhodes via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I wanted to share my latest just up on National Review:

The forces for gay marriage are powerful. You have been their hero in the past, when gay people were not so powerful. The tables are turned now, as I think is clear to everyone. The LGBT community has built a powerful cultural, legal, and political movement. They are not helpless or friendless. They do not need you to distort the Constitution to win the right to live as they choose. We who believe in the traditional understanding of marriage do need your help. We live at a time when our livelihoods are under new attack, when our standing as equal citizens is under attack, when the system of ideas and the deep human realities that gave rise to marriage for millennia are now being dismissed as mere bigotry, as irrational, incomprehensible hatred.

Let me offer you four reasons why you should reject the idea that marriage equality requires all states to treat gay unions as marriages.

1. It is not true that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are equal.

Read more here.  But I conclude with this thought:

Justice Kennedy, you’ve surprised us before. Do it one more time. If originalism doesn’t move you, perhaps an honest plea for pluralism from the newly stigmatized might?

Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at American Principles in Action. 

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