Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 99

4 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

encourage and formalize marriage, confer special benefits
on  married  persons,  and  also  impose  some  special  obliga-
tions.  This understanding of the States’ reasons for recog-
nizing marriage enables the majority to argue that same-
sex marriage serves the States’ objectives in the same way
as opposite-sex marriage. 

This  understanding  of  marriage,  which  focuses  almost
entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry,
is shared by many people today, but it is not the traditional 
one.  For  millennia,  marriage  was  inextricably  linked  to 
the  one  thing  that  only  an  opposite-sex  couple  can  do: 
procreate.

Adherents  to  different  schools  of  philosophy  use  differ-
ent  terms  to  explain  why  society  should  formalize  mar-
riage  and  attach  special  benefits  and  obligations  to  per-
sons  who  marry.  Here,  the  States  defending  their
adherence  to  the  traditional  understanding  of  marriage
have explained their position using the pragmatic vocabu-
lary that characterizes most American political discourse.
Their basic argument is that States formalize and promote 
marriage,  unlike  other  fulfilling  human  relationships,  in
order to encourage potentially procreative conduct to take
place  within  a  lasting  unit  that  has  long  been  thought  to
provide  the  best  atmosphere  for  raising  children.    They
thus  argue  that  there  are  reasonable  secular  grounds  for
restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples. 

If this traditional understanding of the purpose of mar-
riage does not ring true to all ears today, that is probably 
because  the  tie  between  marriage  and  procreation  has
frayed.  Today, for instance, more than 40% of all children 
in  this  country  are  born  to  unmarried  women.2    This  de-
—————— 

2 See, e.g., Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease 
Control  and  Prevention,  National  Center  for  Health  Statistics,  D. 
Martin, B. Hamilton, M. Osterman, S. Curtin, & T. Matthews, Births: 
Final  Data  for  2013,  64  National  Vital  Statistics  Reports,  No.  1,  p. 2
(Jan.  15,  2015),  online  at  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/