Carolina QuotesThis understanding of marriage, which focuses almost entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry, is shared by many people today, but it is not the traditional one. For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate.
Samuel Alito Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Dissenting, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
- year
- 2015
Cite this record
“This understanding of marriage, which focuses almost entirel…” Samuel Alito. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-3B5A1B68E1. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/3b5a1b68e1
More from Samuel Alito
It is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. In this country, no State permitted same-sex marriage until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held in 2003 that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the State Constitution. Nor is the right to same-sex marriage deeply rooted in the traditions of other nations. No country allowed same-sex couples to marry until the Netherlands did so in 2000. What Windsor and the United States seek, therefore, is not the protection of a deeply rooted right but the recognition of a very new right, and they seek this innovation not from a legislative body elected by the people, but from unelected judges. Faced with such a request, judges have cause for both caution and humility.
In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.
Most Americans—understandably—will cheer or lament today’s decision because of their views on the issue of same-sex marriage. But all Americans, whatever their thinking on that issue, should worry about what the majority’s claim of power portends.