As goes Ohio (and Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky), so goes the nation. At least that’s the expectation when, later this spring, the U.S. Supreme Court considers four consolidated lawsuits in which same-sex couples ask the high court finally to determine whether government has the right to categorically restrict gay equal access to civil marriage.
Increasingly, Americans are arriving at the same conclusion: It doesn’t.
When the court last considered the question two years ago — striking key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act and narrowly punting on the question of state recognition — more than 130 prominent Republicans signed an amicus brief arguing that the freedom to marry was entirely consistent with the foundational conservative principle of limited state interference in the lives of private citizens.
Now the number of Republicans signing onto such briefs is set to nearly double, with a few hundred conservative thought leaders joining former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman in a brief to be filed next week asking the court to vindicate the freedom to marry for all.
As a gay Republican who’s been forced to settle simply for cohabitation for nearly six years, this is a deeply personal issue for me — and I’m proud to be among them.
Cultural conservatives warned last go-round that the court risked short-circuiting an as-yet-unresolved public debate on the question of civil marriage for same-sex couples. But if the justices’ 2013 determination to slow-walk the consideration of marriage equality was informed by a concern that a broad ruling might engender a Roe-vs.-Wade-like social divide, no such concern remains today.
Today, nearly every demographic slice of the American public has a durable, positive view of civil marriage for gays and lesbians. Even the movable middle — that massive bloc of fair-minded voters who’ve tried balancing sincerely held religious beliefs on nature of marriage and a desire to treat all people with dignity — isn’t all that movable anymore.
The two most recent public surveys found that at least 60% of registered voters believe the freedom to marry is a constitutional guarantee. Even 59% of Republicans between 18 and 40 years of age, according to one GOP pollster, want to extend civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples.
But the consideration of fundamental rights shouldn’t be subject to majority rule.
By restricting access by gay and lesbian persons to civil marriage, recognized by the Supreme Court in Loving vs. Virginia as essential “to the orderly pursuit of happiness,” cultural conservatives are today denying whole family units the stability and safety that only the law can provide.
By denying the freedom to marry to Michigan nurses April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, two petitioners whose case the Supreme Court will hear in April, America’s self-appointed marriage gatekeepers deny the couple’s three adopted children the basic security of a lawfully recognized two-parent household.
As a partner, it’s painful to have your relationship not recognized by your government. As a parent, it’s devastating.
No child should have to worry what may happen to them upon the death of a parent because the government does not recognize their relationship with their second parent. No mother or father should have to worry how they would make critical decisions related to the health and welfare of their child if their partner passes.
Yet this is the state of high anxiety in which too many gay and lesbian families unfairly suffer today.
The judicial review function should be exercised with extreme restraint, but the high court’s intervention here is both appropriate and necessary to protect Americans’ cherished personal liberties from government overreach.
That’s not just a conservative view — it’s a uniquely American one.
Richardson is a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee. He is among the signers of a Republican amicus brief to the Supreme Court advocating for the freedom to marry.
