Gay Marriage

[Occhidiangela]

Ghostiger:

Note the themes of three related amendments. Slavery prohibited. At the Federal level, due process required for all citizens. Universal suffrage.

XIII
Section. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
XIV
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
XV
Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This series of agreements cleaned up a compromise that had been required to get the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, agreed among the States and dealt with a carryover economic and social instution founded in the European colonial era of America wherein slavery was a legitimate practice. That change was paid for in blood.

The Prohibition was not just any prohibition, it was targeted via amendment, versus via statute, against consumption and production and sale of alcohol. That we could undo that dumbassity is admirable. There are still statutes that control alcohol, and even counties in Kentucky, for example, that prohibit at the local level, production, consumption, and sale of alcoholic beverages.

State or Federal issue: wherefore and why? That's a good test of how much "buy in" of any given law can expect.

At present, to return to on topic, that is still very much a work in progress in re the state of marriage in other than conventional pairs.