The Constitution says that the power to define marriage (or how to eat kumquats or catch stray dogs, etc.) is as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people”. Tenth Amendment , 1791.
In short, the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states all powers that are not granted to the federal government by the Constitution, except for those powers that states are constitutionally forbidden from exercising.
Accordingly, because the Constitution neither delegates the power to define marriage to the United States (i.e., the three branches of the federal government) nor prohibits such power to the states, the power to do so is reserved to the states or people. The Supreme Court has no such power.
That’s just one reason why the minority dissents expressed shock and outrage that five Justices would simply ignore the Constitution so brazenly. As I said in #682, the majority opinion was hardly a brilliant legal brief. It was Per, just as was the Court’s earlier transformation of murder into a constitutional right of a mother to kill all her unborn children, including partially born children.
Both of those court findings are dangerous legal absurdities, and all nine Justices know it. Dangerous because it could cause a Constitutional crises resulting in the breakdown of order. Just how far can the people be pushed? I pray that we don’t have to find out.
But, if the next legal absurdity is the Court’s attempted removal of our constitutional and God-given right to the free exercise of religion (especially regarding the innocence of our children in school), the Left will reap the whirlwind. That’s why the Left hates and fears the so-called Religious Right.