The Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, poses thornier questions about political equality, and could have much broader consequences, because it calls into question the rights of all states to limit marriages to unions between men and women. I fully support marriage equality. But, strange as it may sound, I believe that in the Prop 8 case, the court should decide not to decide the gay marriage issue at all. The proposition has already been struck down by federal judges at the trial and appellate levels, the governor and attorney general of California have refused to defend the proposition and the parties seeking the Supreme Court’s review lack the legal capacity, or standing, to pursue the case.If the court decides to resolve the merits, it should rule that the Constitution commands recognition of same-sex marriage on equal terms with opposite-sex marriage. A decision to the contrary would be a modern-era Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious 1896 decision affirming segregation as “separate but equal.” Correspondingly, a decision ruling Prop 8 unconstitutional would be the Roberts court’s Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that struck down racial segregation in schools. The legal and moral choice should be clear.
But the Brown analogy should give us pause. Same-sex marriage is legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, but is the country ready for a decision requiring all 50 states to recognize such unions immediately? Brown triggered a notorious backlash, in both the South and the North, and its impact was blunted by demographic changes and later court rulings, leading to what the education scholar Gary A. Orfield has called the “resegregation” of American schooling.
Or consider Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that protected women’s right to have abortions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an unabashed defender of abortion rights, has criticized Roe for imprudently intervening in that debate, at a time when the idea of abortion rights was already gaining ground at the state level. The Roe decision galvanized the anti-abortion movement, with political impacts that still linger.
In the long run, national recognition of same-sex marriage is inevitable. Same-sex marriage rights, at first imposed by courts, have now been recognized by state legislatures and prevailed in all four states where they were on the ballot in last year’s election. Young people overwhelmingly support it, and public opinion has shifted on this issue faster than on almost any other social issue in history. It is only a matter of time before all state laws reflect that view.
