Member-only story
Six Years Ago, SCOTUS Legalized Same-Sex Marriage — and Shamed Single People
14 perspectives more inclusive and less stigmatizing of single people than Justice Kennedy’s
Six years ago, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Obergefell v. Hodges was an historic decision.
To activists who worked so hard for this, the ruling was a huge step forward on a long path to social justice. I’m all for social justice and civil rights. But the decision let more people into marriage while all single people were still unjustly left out of all of the benefits and protections awarded only to those who are legally married. It was a broader conceptualization of fairness than we had before the ruling, but it was still a very narrow view of the people and relationships and life pursuits that matter.
What’s more, the ruling was filled with paeans to the presumed superiority of married people, and it shamed single people. For example, in a paragraph that has been widely extolled, the one that brought the ruling to a close, Justice Anthony Kennedy said of same sex couples who want to marry that their “hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness.” Here is the complete paragraph:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Justice Kennedy also said:
“Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.”
What stunning expressions of matrimania and singlism! At my Living Single blog at Psychology…
