Court Opinion

ID: 9809073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:00:26.325524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:45.156981
License: Public Domain

*622KNOLL, Justice,
additionally concurring.
hi concur because I am constrained to follow the rule of law set forth by a majority of the nine lawyers appointed to the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, - U.S. -, 135 S.Ct. 2584, 192 L.Ed.2d 609, 2015 WL 2473451 (2015). However, as the author of Forum, for Equality PAC v. McKeithen, 04-2477 (La.1/19/05), 893 So.2d 715, which recognized the constitutionality of the amendment defining marriage in this state, I write separately to express my views concerning the horrific impact these five lawyers have made on the democratic rights of the American people to define marriage and the rights stemming by operation of law therefrom. It is a complete and unnecessary insult to the people of Louisiana who voted on this very issue.
Our U.S. Constitution envisions change through democracy and reserves to the states and the people all powers not delegated to the federal government. U.S. Const. Amends. IX & X. Unilaterally, these five lawyers took for themselves a question the Constitution expressly leaves to the people and about which the people have been in open debate — the true democratic process. This is not a constitutionally-mandated decision, but a super-legislative imposition of the majority’s will over the solemn expression of the people evidenced in their state constitutional definitions of marriage.
Moreover, the five unelected judges’ declaration that the right to marry whomever one chooses is a fundamental right is a mockery of those rights ^explicitly enumerated in our Bill of Rights. Simply stated, it is a legal fiction imposed upon the entirety of this nation because these five people think it should be. No one contests the historical definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman or its social necessity to protect the product of their physical union, ie., children. While I have many friends in same-sex relationships, I respectfully would not bestow upon them legal rights of marriage as having a child of their physical union is literally impossible. Having children may be accomplished through legal adoption or artificial means of reproduction but neither avenue requires marriage.
It is a sad day in America when five lawyers beholden to none and appointed for life can rob the people of their democratic process, forcing so-called civil liberties regarding who can marry on all Americans when the issue was decided by the states as solemn expressions of the will of the people. I wholeheartedly disagree and find that, rather than a triumph of constitutionalism, the opinion of these five lawyers is an utter travesty as is my constrained adherence to their “law of the land” enacted not by the will of the American people but by five judicial activists.