Top 12 Quotes from the SCOTUS Opinion That Made Gay Marriage Legal

Here are quotes from the actual opinion

The Supreme Court made a decision today that altered the lives of millions by extending them the right to marriage in any state. In a tightly contested opinion (5–4), the Court decided that it was unconstitutional for states to restrict the right of marriage to same sex couples. Since most of us are consuming the countless articles about it, here are some of the actual memorable quotes from the opinion released by the court. You can find the full opinion here.

• “Since the dawn of history, marriage has transformed strangers into relatives, binding families and societies together.”
• “The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. That institution- even as confined to opposite-sex relations-has evolved over time.”
• “For much of the 20th century, moreover, homosexuality was treated as an illness. When the American Psychiatric Association published the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1952, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, a position adhered to until 1973.”
• “Overtime and in other contexts, the Court has reiterated that the right to marry is fundamental under the Due Process Clause.”
• “A first premise of the Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.”
• “It fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”
• “As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples.”
• “Excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, regulated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life.”
• “As the State itself makes marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion from that status has the effect of teaching that gays and lesbians are unequal in important respects.. It demeans gays and lesbians for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation’s society.”
• “Indeed, in interpreting the Equal Protection Clause the Court has recognized the new insights and societal understandings can reveal unjustified inequality within our most fundamental institutions that once passed unnoticed and unchallenged.”
• “The Nation’s courts are open to injured individuals who come to them vindicate their own direct, personal stake in our basic charter.”
• “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.”

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