A Historic Conclusion

It is always surprising what the U.S. Supreme Court can distill from the American Constitution, a text which has hardly changed since the 18th century and yet is the decisive guide to judgment in questions concerning the present. Only 29 years ago, the Supreme Court considered it to be constitutional to throw citizens into jail because of their same-sex orientation. Just one generation later, the same court ruled, on the basis of the same constitution, that gay couples can no longer be denied the right to marry.

This case illustrates that the robed judges in the temple-like structure on First Street are not interpreting the Constitution uninfluenced by social trends, because as far as tolerance toward gays and lesbians is concerned, America has experienced an astonishing shift. The criminalization of homosexual acts, which was included in the penal codes of half of the states in 1986, was abolished across the country in 2003. Not long afterward, Massachusetts was the first state to allow gay marriage, and in doing so opened up a new front in this political battle. In 2008, Barack Obama was still identifying himself as being against gay marriage for opportunistic reasons, because he knew he had the overwhelming majority of voters behind him. Today, 60 percent of Americans welcome this form of marriage, and 70 percent live in areas where gay people were already able to get married.

Given this development, it would have been absurd if the law had continued to set its face against it. From a liberal point of view, it is nonsensical in any case, in such a fundamental area as love and partnership, to irrationally deny a minority a right that the majority is entitled to as a matter of course, and embed a form of discrimination that helps no one. But for practical reasons, too, it would have been indefensible in the long run to treat gay couples differently depending on where in the U.S. they lived. The decision is therefore a logical conclusion in a historic development, and it suits a country that in its hour of birth declared the pursuit of happiness to be an inalienable right.