Amy K. Hall of Stand to Reason posted the following on June 27. You can see her original post on the Stand to Reason website here.
As all parties agree, many [polygamous and polyamorous groups] provide loving
and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And
hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such
[groups].
Excluding [polygamous and
polyamorous groups] from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the
right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage
offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow
lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by
unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult
and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and
humiliate the children of [polygamous and polyamorous groups].
[Polygamous and polyamorous
groups] are consigned to an instability many opposite-sex [and same-sex]
couples would deem intolerable in their own lives. As the State itself makes
marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion
from that status has the effect of teaching that [those with a polygamous or polyamorous orientation] are unequal in
important respects. It demeans [those with a polygamous or polyamorous orientation]
for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation’s
society. [Polygamous and polyamorous groups], too, may aspire to the
transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning.
The limitation of marriage to
opposite-sex [and same-sex] couples may long have seemed natural and just, but
its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is
now manifest. With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding
[polygamous and polyamorous groups] from the marriage right impose stigma and
injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.
These considerations lead to the
conclusion that the right to marry [whomever one wishes to marry] is a
fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due
Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment [polygamous
and polyamorous groups] may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The
Court now holds that [polygamous and polyamorous groups] may exercise the
fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them.
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.
Don't take my word for it, read the post - don't wait for the movie.
Have a little hope on me,
Roger
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