[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

The constitutional argument behind the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling is downright flimsy, and therefore very vulnerable to being reversed.

I strongly disagree. I think the constitutional arguments are extremely compelling and almost impossible to answer or refute. That's one of the most remarkable things about the issue. I think the simple and logical arguments were just waiting around all these years for the Court to sense that history and society had moved to the point that a decision on the subject would be credible or palatable to the country as a whole. You don't just need the logic, you also need the right moment. It's like with Brown v Board. It shouldn't have taken a legal scholar to figure out that segregation was not equal protection, and the arguments in favor of it were the opposite of flimsy, but the Supreme Court must guage the climate in which it operates if it has any hope of maintaining the credibility it needs to do its job.

I doubt very much that a future Supreme Court could change the rule, or that it would matter very much a few generations from now if it did. Within ten years or less, gay marriage will be so ordinary, so ingrained in our lives, so uncontroversial, that it will be impossible to unravel, and the constitutional arguments in favor of it will be all the more compelling since it will be a fact on the ground rather than an aspiration in all 50 states. Opponents will no longer be able to make the "it's always been that way so it should stay that way" argument, since inertia will favor proponents. Indeed, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single civil right that's ever been entirely reversed by the Supreme Court (though some have been eroded at the edges).