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Originally Posted by Frownland
That wasn't in the points that we were discussing, but since you asked nicely:
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I did actually. It was the entire basis of my argument.
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The LGBT community was being denied privileges that were granted to heterosexual couples, which sounds like something that the 14th amendment does not allow for. I think that's a valid justification for declaring same sex marriage bans unconstitutional.
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I'm well aware that the 13th Amendment extended the jurisdiction of the Bill of Rights to the states. I'm not talking about states' rights. I'm talking about how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution in general.
I'm also not talking about
this ruling. As far as I'm concerned, gay marriage does fall under the Constitution. At the same time, I didn't even know this was a case until today, so I have no idea who the parties involved in the case are, what the case was about, or how the Court interpreted the Constitution to decide their ruling. For all I know, this could in fact be bad law, not because the Constitution shouldn't protect gay marriage, but simply because the specifics of the case might not have justified the Court's application of the law in this specific case. I simply have no idea, since, again, I have no idea what the case was.
I was using
Brown v. Board of Education as my example (improperly I must admit, as I should have been referring to
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States), because the Court interpreted the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution to rule that businesses discriminating based on race was unconstitutional. The clause reads that "The Congress shall have power...":
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To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
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The bolded was the basis for their decision (along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Basically, the Court said that a business that catered to out of state customers was violating the Constitution by discriminating against blacks, and this has since been interpreted to encompass pretty much everything.
My point is that it's a big stretch to say that the Commerce Clause should extend to that. And if the Court can interpret the Constitution to say pretty much anything it wants to, then the Constitution's authority has been functionally superseded by the Supreme Court.
Again, I'm not worried about the Court staging a quiet coup to seize control of the government, since they generally are pretty conservative about wielding their authority, but every time the law of the land becomes watered down whenever it suits the Court's moral prerogative, then the law of unintended consequences threatens to undermine the greater good of the country later on in unforeseen ways.