[TheRealVille]

That's right. Gay marriage has never been a constitutional right, which is why Scalia asked the lawyer for the plaintiffs to pinpoint the time that gay marriage became a constitutional right. The only way that gay marriage will be ruled a constitutional right is that five Supreme Court justices decide that the U.S. Constitution should be subject to the whims of public opinion. That would be a very dangerous precedent to set.

If gay rights advocates want people to recognize gay marriage as a right, then they need to do the heavy lifting that it takes to get a constitutional amendment passed. Supreme Court rulings not based on the written words of the Constitution just do not command the same respect as those that do.

Equal Protection Clause
Main article: Equal Protection Clause


U.S. circuit judges Robert Katzmann, Damon Keith, and Sonia Sotomayor at a 2004 exhibit on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown v. Board of Education.
The equal protection clause was added to deal with the lack of equal protection provided by law to all in the course of administering justice in the states who had Black codes. Under black codes blacks could not sue, give evidence, be witnesses, received harsher degree of punishment, etc. The principal author of the Equal Protection Clause, John Bingham stated that phrase “equal protection” under the Fourteenth Amendment means that “It confers upon Congress power to see to it that the protection given by the laws of the States shall be equal in respect to life and liberty and property to all persons.”[28] The inclusion of the words equal protection along with the words life, liberty and property provided protection for all persons from arbitrary taking of life, imprisonment or confiscation of property.[28] Bingham said in a speech from March 31, 1871 that "the words “equal protection of the laws” were more than a glittering generality", but "that they were to be enforced to the extent of securing all guarantees of life, liberty, and property as provided by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States."[28] Thus it was Congress power to enforce laws guaranteed to all for the protection of life, liberty and property from arbitrary government action.[28] The equal protection of the laws disable legislatures and judges from unequally administering those rights of justice the State guarantees to all men (everyone has a right to process of law before being put to death, property confiscated or imprisoned).[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_...nstitution