Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 88.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

11 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

definition of liberty, it would not have included a right to
governmental  recognition  and  benefits.  Instead,  it  would 
have included a right to engage in the very same activities 
that  petitioners  have  been  left  free  to  engage  in—making 
vows, holding religious ceremonies celebrating those vows, 
raising  children,  and  otherwise  enjoying  the  society  of
one’s  spouse—without  governmental  interference.    At  the 
founding,  such  conduct  was  understood  to  predate  gov-
ernment,  not  to  flow  from  it.    As  Locke  had  explained 
many  years  earlier,  “The  first  society  was  between  man 
and  wife,  which  gave  beginning  to  that  between  parents 
and  children.”  Locke  §77,  at  39;  see  also  J.  Wilson,  Lec-
tures on Law, in 2 Collected Works of James Wilson 1068 
(K.  Hall  and  M.  Hall  eds.  2007)  (concluding  “that  to  the 
institution  of  marriage  the  true  origin  of  society  must  be 
traced”).  Petitioners  misunderstand  the  institution  of 
marriage when they say that it would “mean little” absent 
governmental recognition.  Brief for Petitioners in No. 14– 
556, p. 33.

Petitioners’  misconception  of  liberty  carries  over  into 
their  discussion  of  our  precedents  identifying  a  right  to
marry, not one of which has expanded the concept of “lib-
erty” beyond the concept of negative liberty.  Those prece-
dents all involved absolute prohibitions on private actions
associated with marriage.  Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 
(1967), for example, involved a couple who was criminally 
prosecuted  for  marrying  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
cohabiting  in  Virginia,  id.,  at  2–3.5    They  were  each  sen-

—————— 

5 The suggestion of petitioners and their amici that antimiscegenation 
laws  are  akin  to  laws  defining  marriage  as  between  one  man  and  one 
woman  is  both  offensive  and  inaccurate.    “America’s  earliest  laws 
against  interracial  sex  and  marriage  were  spawned  by  slavery.”    P. 
Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of 
Race in America 19 (2009).  For instance, Maryland’s 1664 law prohibit-
ing  marriages  between  “ ‘freeborne  English  women’ ”  and  “ ‘Negro
Sla[v]es’ ”  was  passed  as  part  of  the  very  act  that  authorized  lifelong