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Page Number: 45.0

6 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

a man and a woman.”  Ante, at 6.  Early Americans drew 
heavily  on  legal  scholars  like  William  Blackstone,  who
regarded  marriage  between  “husband  and  wife”  as  one  of 
the  “great  relations  in  private  life,”  and  philosophers  like
John Locke, who described marriage as “a voluntary com-
pact between man and woman” centered on “its chief end,
procreation”  and  the  “nourishment  and  support”  of  chil-
dren.  1  W.  Blackstone,  Commentaries  *410;  J.  Locke, 
Second  Treatise  of  Civil  Government  §§78–79,  p.  39  (J. 
Gough  ed.  1947).  To  those  who  drafted  and  ratified  the 
Constitution, this conception of marriage and family “was
a  given:  its  structure,  its  stability,  roles,  and  values  ac-
cepted by all.”  Forte, The Framers’ Idea of Marriage and 
Family,  in  The  Meaning  of  Marriage  100,  102  (R.  George 
& J. Elshtain eds. 2006). 

The  Constitution  itself  says  nothing  about  marriage,
and the Framers thereby entrusted the States with “[t]he
whole  subject  of  the  domestic  relations  of  husband  and 
wife.”  Windsor, 570 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17) (quoting 
In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586, 593–594 (1890)).  There is no 
dispute that every State at the founding—and every State
throughout  our  history  until  a  dozen  years  ago—defined
marriage  in  the  traditional,  biologically  rooted  way.    The 
four  States  in  these  cases  are  typical.    Their  laws,  before 
and after statehood, have treated marriage as the union of 
a man and a woman.  See DeBoer v. Snyder, 772 F. 3d 388, 
396–399 (CA6 2014).  Even when state laws did not spec- 
ify  this  definition  expressly,  no  one  doubted  what  they 
meant.  See Jones v. Hallahan, 501 S. W. 2d 588, 589 (Ky. 
App.  1973).    The  meaning  of  “marriage”  went  without 
saying.

Of  course,  many  did  say  it.  In  his  first  American  dic-
tionary,  Noah  Webster  defined  marriage  as  “the  legal 
union  of  a  man  and  woman  for  life,”  which  served  the 
purposes of “preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the
sexes, . . . promoting domestic felicity, and . . . securing the