The fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, following the Civil War. For the next 147 years it was understood to require equal treatment for all Americans, regardless of race.
This spring the narrowest possible majority of Supreme Court justices found, lurking within it, the right of persons of alternative sexual orientations to marry. This is a protection that 6 or 7 generations of jurists had not detected. Whatever happened to stare decisis?
I take no position on same-sex marriage. I believe strongly legalizing it - if that is the public will - should have been done via legislation by elected representatives. Government by five unelected jurists-for-life is not what this nation is about.
