Or pick your favorite Justice who's furious that Mr. Obergefell had the insolence to presume to get married to another man. You know Mr. Obergefell; he's the one whose husband died of ALS disease, and who, like other plaintiffs in the suit that bears his name, apparently injured SOMEONE somewhere really badly by wanting all American government authorities to recognize his marriage as valid.
Now, sure, some of the Supreme Court's closet liberals, doubtless working for ISIS, would have you believe with this decision that "intimate choices defining personal identity and beliefs" were protected by Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird; that bans on prisoners marrying and on interracial marriages were held unconstitutional by Turner v. Safley and Loving v. Virginia, respectively; and that "Same-sex couples have the same right as opposite-sex couples to enjoy intimate association," according to Lawrence v. Texas.
But I ask you: if those citations in the majority's decision were REALLY all that important, then wouldn't all four separate dissents, or at least one of them, have gone in depth to address them? However, those citations were clearly NOT important enough to spend TOO much time on, because it was more important to take a bunch of words for those dissenters to hold that the majority's decision to allow gay marriage suffered by comparison with tradition (Alito's dissent), suffered by LACK of comparison with slavery (Thomas), and suffered by asserting that intimacy was "a freedom" (Scalia).
Most brilliantly, the esteemed and searching legal mind that is Clarence Thomas's found that the Declaration of Independence should instead control, by its insistence that "all men are created equal," which he quotes approvingly to assert that er... gay people wanting to marry a consenting adult of the same sex should not be treated as the equals of similar straight people. Plainly, the "equal" in the 14th Amendment is so different from the "equal" in the Declaration of Independence that it is not worth mentioning.
Second question (since Obergefell v. Hodges explored two different ones as well): My Dear Dissenting Justices, since we're all agreed that heavens to Betsy, the LAST thing that the 14th Amendment is is a controlling law that should be held to supersede state laws regarding gay marriage, well...
...what the earthly heck DOES the 14th Amendment do, in your opinions?
You know, it's a funny thing about the 14th Amendment: it contains absolutely NO wording restricting its provisions to any race. None at all.
Isn't that interesting?
It merely says, in pertinent part:
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.
Now, you can't fault folks like Justice Scalia for overly hasty dismissal of the 14th Amendment's Due Process clause, and its caution not to "deprive any person of... liberty," when it comes to gay marriage; well, unless he had
once said something as gay-friendly as to admit that gay SEX (not even nice, clean marriage; dirty, filthy, disgusting, Opus-Dei-bashing SEX) "undoubtedly is" a liberty. Well, but it still didn't constitute a "fundamental right," because it wasn't "firmly rooted in tradition," or something like that.
But for the love of Mike, Justice Scalia--or any of you--what the holy heck IS a liberty that is a fundamental right, rooted firmly enough in tradition?
It's certainly not everything in the Constitution--after all, when the Constitution was created, how many things in it were "firmly rooted in tradition"? It all looks very novel to me, compared to the system of government we had before.
Or did I misunderstand? Perhaps you meant that NO state laws should ever be subordinate to the 14th Amendment. Is that what you meant? No... that can't be it. Because you just alluded to "tradition" being enough to POSSIBLY excuse holding the 14th Amendment to supersede state laws. I think.
But not marriage. Because, of course, in your words, Mr. Scalia: "We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment's text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment's ratification." (We'll leave out the fact that "unchallenged" would seem plenty inaccurate, given that gay marriage has been enshrined into law in many states and nations, dating back to the 2000s, but Justice Scalia doesn't specify what period of time would be "long" enough, or what adoption "widespread" enough, to be considered a "tradition." Words are important, but Justice Scalia isn't a strict textualist.)
But... Mr. Scalia, help us: where the holy heck DOES the 14th Amendment control? Race only? Well THAT can't be; after all, racial equality wasn't "firmly rooted in tradition" when the 14th Amendment became law. Yet if race was the only thing that those who drafted the amendment meant, then... ?
And most important of all: when you answer that question, how will you differentiate that from dirty, filthy Legislating from the Bench that the majority did when they ruled gay marriage as essential a liberty as straight marriage, under Due Process, and making it illegal to be unequal treatment, under the Equal Protection clause, of the 14th Amendment?
Tell us how YOUR favorite Things Protected by the 14th Amendment be different from that gay marriage Thing Protected by the 14th Amendment? What is the principle by which ANYTHING can be such a Thing, without being an arbitrary list of Things Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts Happen to Approve Of? And since you say you do not know what "understanding" of "constitutional imperatives" means, nor what "define" means, I may wait in vain for this; but could you please tell us how long a previously unchallenged tradition of "only the kind of marriages I like" should be challenged by "the kind of marriages I accuse the majority of liking," before the challenger marriages might be considered to be a "tradition" too, and therefore presumably now covered by the 14th Amendment?
We await your flawless logic with breath abated!
EDIT: Re: Justice Thomas' Due Process attack deserves more. He draws a distinction between the "negative" right that he reads the 14th Amendment's Due Process clause as conferring (meaning the government can't just kangaroo-court you into jail without giving you the due process of law), on the one hand, and conferring a "right to government recognition and benefits."
But good lord--if it's held to be no denial of "life, liberty and estate" (in the words of one historical authority Thomas cites in support of his position) to keep one class (gay married people) from getting the same financial benefits as another class (straight married people), that gets into real do-re-mi MONEY.
Is he claiming "well, as long as there's a law saying it's OK for the government to confiscate all your property whenever it wants, just for being black, then you've gotten your due process of the law, see? Because it's the will of the People (italics Scalia's) that that should happen, and because there's a law. So, due process of the law. There you go"? No, because per Thomas, the 14th Amendment prevents that taking, because Due Process is a NEGATIVE right, so that we're free from government ACTION against one. It's a shield against government, not a sword that you wield against the government to compel government benefits.
But, say, if the government inflated the currency, and gave trillions to all white people, but gave none to any people of color, then it'd be unconstitutional per the 14th Amendment, and it'd be a denial of Due Process, because it'd be a deprivation of wealth without due process of law. So is denying such rights of inheritance, etc. to gay people who marry. It would surely stretch the truth to claim that "well, but there's a law that says it's okay to just confiscate their wealth, so due process is served." Even if, the Equal Protection Clause would surely be offended by this; and the Equal Protection arguments merit only a footnote from Thomas, who is afraid to discuss it much (understandably).
(This doesn't get anywhere NEAR addressing the fact that money is WAY down the list of things that many find most important about marriage recognition, such as, like, Love, and shit. But I wouldn't want to make Justice Scalia hide his head in a bag.)
Thanks to poster Joffan, whose post helped to nudge me into the addendum.