Gay Marriage Ratified in 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 deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

14th Amendment of US Constitution

The men who wrote and ratified this amendment in 1868 would surely be surprised that they had codified abortion, anchor babies, and gay marriage.  Their intent was to raise the freed slaves to full citizenship - which had been denied by Dred Scott - and force Southern States to treat them as equal to other citizens.  Reading more into it than that is just judges stretching the law to allow them to rule whatever they want to rule.  They aren't making new rights, they are merely adjudicating rights that have existed since 1868.  Really?

 

There are two options: The amendment was intentionally written to achieve the modern ends or it was unwittingly written in a manner that allowed modern ends to be achieved.  What is more likely?  The answer is obvious.  The amendment has too much wiggle room for 'interpretation' and the judiciary has exploited it.  The judges on the Supreme Court all know the purpose of the amendment - they are lawyers who presumably made some study of the Constitution - but it provides endless power grab opportunities.

 

This is why original intent is so important.  If you cut the Constitution free of the context in which it was written, much of the language suddenly becomes malleable to a variety of interpretations.  Those who ratified the amendment in 1868 obviously didn't intend gay marriage to be validated.  It isn't even arguable.  But, having freed the amendment from its context, it is just a case of equal protection that allows a massive cultural shift that most states had voted against.