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Page Number: 43

4 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting
 

I 

Petitioners and their amici base their arguments on the
“right to marry” and the imperative of “marriage equality.”
There is no serious dispute that, under our precedents, the
Constitution protects a right to marry and requires States
to apply their marriage laws equally.  The real question in 
these  cases  is  what  constitutes  “marriage,”  or—more
precisely—who decides what constitutes “marriage”?

The majority largely ignores these questions, relegating
ages of human experience with marriage to a paragraph or 
two.  Even  if  history  and  precedent  are  not  “the  end”  of 
these cases, ante, at 4, I would not “sweep away what has
so  long  been  settled”  without  showing  greater  respect  for
all  that  preceded  us.  Town  of  Greece  v.  Galloway,  572 
U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 8). 

A 
As the majority acknowledges, marriage “has existed for
millennia  and  across  civilizations.”  Ante,  at  3.  For  all 
those  millennia,  across  all  those  civilizations,  “marriage”
referred to only one relationship: the union of a man and a 
woman.  See  ante,  at  4;  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  on  Question  1, 
p. 12 (petitioners conceding that they are not aware of any 
society that permitted same-sex marriage before 2001).  As 
the  Court  explained  two  Terms  ago,  “until  recent  years,
. . .  marriage  between  a  man  and  a  woman  no  doubt  had 
been  thought  of  by  most  people  as  essential  to  the  very 
definition  of  that  term  and  to  its  role  and  function 
throughout  the  history  of  civilization.”    United  States  v. 
Windsor, 570 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 13). 

This  universal  definition  of  marriage  as  the  union  of  a
man  and  a  woman  is  no  historical  coincidence.    Marriage
did  not  come  about  as  a  result  of  a  political  movement,
discovery,  disease,  war,  religious  doctrine,  or  any  other
moving  force  of  world  history—and  certainly  not  as  a 
result  of  a  prehistoric  decision  to  exclude  gays  and  lesbi-