In light of the announcement that the Connecticut Supreme Court has said that the equal rights language of the state constitution requires that same sex couples be granted the right to marry, I wonder what the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) would say if they were faced with such a case.
The Article First of the Connecticut Constitution talks about "equal protection" in Section 20:
Sec. 20. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the law
nor be subjected to segregation or discrimination in the
exercise or enjoyment of his civil or political rights
because of religion, race, color, ancestry or national
origin.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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 to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This amendment was the basis for U. S. Supreme Court decision to declare unconstitutional laws that prohibited mixed-race marriages. Many people who oppose gay marriage say that this provision does not apply to gay marriage. They ignore the concept of "equal protection" in favor of a much more narrow interpretation. They say that the SCOTUS decision about mixed-race marriages applies only to marriage between a man and a woman, not marriage between two people of the same sex.
But, if the Supreme Court had not reached its mixed-race marriage decision then McCain and Palin and I suppose Obama and Biden would now have to modify their public statements. Instead of saying that marriage is defined as "marriage between one man and one woman," they would be saying that the definition of marriage is "marriage between one man and one woman of the same race."