If Hillary falters, Elizabeth is there...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Constitution Had Everything To Do With Gay Marriage Ruling
Elizabeth Warren is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.
Because of our Constitution, senseless discrimination cannot survive when it is brought out of the darkness
Our
Constitution fiercely guards freedom and liberty, and strongly
disapproves of state-sanctioned discrimination. The Supreme Court’s
recent decision in Obergefell v. Hodges recognizing a fundamental right
to equal marriage for LGBT Americans sits squarely within both text and
tradition. Indeed, what is truly remarkable about this case is not the
outcome, but rather the people who made it possible — all of the many
individuals across our nation who came forward to fight for the liberty
and equality that our Constitution guarantees for all of us.
The
inclusion of a Bill of Rights, with its protections for religious
liberty, freedom of speech, and due process, was an essential condition
of ratifying the Constitution and bringing the colonies together into
one United States of America. Ratification of the Reconstruction
Amendments, including the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal
protection, was a necessary component of rebuilding our union after the
Civil War. Without these rights and liberties, there would be no
Constitution — and no nation.
Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote in Obergefell that “the generations that wrote
and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not
presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so
they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of
all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” Some would prefer
to pretend otherwise, but the Constitution did not come with an owner’s
manual of how-to instructions for working through every conceivable
situation across the centuries — instead, it outlined principles to
serve as guideposts. Applying the Constitution’s terms to unforeseen
circumstances does not go beyond the job of a judge; that is the job of a
judge.
Even
so, for generations, these broad constitutional protections stood
side-by-side with state-sanctioned discrimination against LGBT
Americans. States criminalized same-sex relationships, banned same-sex
marriages, and excluded their own citizens from anti-discrimination
protections. This story isn’t new. For nearly a hundred years,
systematic, state-sanctioned discrimination against African Americans
coexisted with constitutional protections adopted after the Civil War
specifically to prevent it. The lesson in both cases is that
constitutional freedoms and liberties are meaningful only when our
nation is courageous enough not to look away from them.
As
a nation, we see now that discrimination heaped LGBT Americans violates
protections laid out in the Constitution. We see it because countless
Americans have stepped forward to make themselves seen and to expose
ugly discrimination for what it is: a denial of liberty and equality for
our fellow citizens.
We
see it because of judges like Margaret Marshall, the former Chief
Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who wrote the first
decision legalizing same-sex marriage almost 12 years ago. A native of
South Africa and a former anti-Apartheid activist, Marshall has said she
had given no thought to the issue before the case came to her court —
but she knew discrimination when she saw it.
We
see it because of civil rights lawyers like Mary Bonauto, the legal
architect of the marriage cases who argued that Massachusetts case and
earlier this year stood before the Supreme Court seeking national
recognition of those same rights in Obergefell, and because of her
colleagues at Boston’s Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, who
worked tirelessly for more than 30 years to fight government
discrimination against LGBT Americans in areas like criminal
prosecution, adoption, medical treatment, and marriage.
We
see it because of people like Jim Obergefell — who married his husband
John on the tarmac at the Baltimore airport in 2013. Months later, John
lost his fight with ALS. Years later, Jim took his fight to be listed on
John’s death certificate in their native Ohio all the way to the
Supreme Court — and won.
In
America, because of our Constitution, senseless discrimination –
discrimination that demeans the worth of our neighbors and our coworkers
and our family members – cannot survive when it is brought out of the
darkness. It has never been easy for us to shine the light on such
discrimination. But when we see it, when we stop looking away and
finally acknowledge it, it is never long before we formally recognize
what is compelled by our Constitution. We recognize what has always been
there: equality and dignity under the law, for all Americans, no matter
who they are.
When
looking at this equal marriage decision, Chief Justice John Roberts
asserts that the Constitution “had nothing to do with it.” He’s wrong.
Our Constitution had everything to do with it — with the liberty of two
adults to have their love treated the same as that of any other couple.
And it is because of the tireless work of jurists, lawyers, husbands
like Jim Obergefell, and countless other LGBT Americans who stepped
forward to speak out, that our nation will no longer look away from what
our Constitution requires.
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