First, two quotes from judges about marriage equality:
“[By] choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix” (Justice Thomas, 2020).
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix” (Judge Leon Bazile, 1965).
The first is Thomas’ opinion on the 2015 Supreme Court case that declared unconstitutional all laws limiting marriage to straight coupling.
The second is from a case overturned in 1967, a case in which the presiding judge used religious principle to support miscegenation (prohibition against racial intermarriage).
It is a reminder that we should be particularly suspicious of religious justifications for civil policy.
And would someone maybe remind Justice Thomas that miscegenation is just a whisper away from homophobia.
G Beckman 