Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts argued in his dissent in Friday’s same-sex marriage case that by saying gay marriages are constitutional, the Court may be heading down the road toward legalizing polygamy.
Roberts was one of four dissenters in the case, and argued that the Court’s majority opinion goes too far in prescribing law in an area that had been left to the states. He also said it raises significant questions, including whether states have a right to define marriage as being between two people.
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“Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective ‘two’ in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not,” Roberts wrote. “Indeed, from the standpoint of history and tradition, a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a two-person union to plural unions, which have deep roots in some cultures around the world.”
“If the majority is willing to take the big leap, it is hard to see how it can say no to the shorter one,” he wrote.
Roberts added that much of the Court’s reasoning in favor of same-sex marriage could apply to polygamous marriages. The majority opinion said there is “dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marriage,” and Roberts asked why there wouldn’t be that same dignity between three people.
“If a same-sex couple has the constitutional right to marry because their children would otherwise ‘suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser,’ antem … why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to a family of three or more persons raising children?” he asked.
