Anthony Kennedy (on left)
Justice Anthony Kennedy is probably the Supreme Court's "swing vote" when it comes to same-sex marriage, which is an annoying way of saying there's a 50 percent chance he'll do the correct thing and confirm that the Constitution guarantees the same rights to all, and a 50 percent chance he'll say nuts to that, no marriage for the gays, sorry but "equal protection" doesn't mean what it sounds like.
We're rooting hard that he ate a delicious breakfast this morning and comes down on the side of justice (it's in his title, after all!), but this one comment from oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, the critical marriage case the court is hearing right now, doesn't leave us feeling very nuptial:
Kennedy multiple times talked about marriage being the same for "millenia." He said he "kept coming back" to that thought. #ReutersSCOTUS
— @David_Ingram
The great thing about being a Supreme Court justice is that you get to be right so long as four of your colleagues agree with you, even if the entire body of human history says no, you are in fact wrong. And Justice Kennedy is, in fact,
ever so very wrong:
"Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands," said Steven Mintz, a history professor at Columbia University. "We say, 'When and where?'"
From the Bible, perhaps? Nope! King Solomon had 700 wives (plus another 300 concubines, just in case). In fact, polygamy has been common throughout history (for millennia, even!) and is still very popular in the Muslim world. But you know what's really new and not nearly as popular, historically speaking?
That would be "traditional marriage":
The idea of marriage as a sexually exclusive, romantic union between one man and one woman is a relatively recent development. Until two centuries ago, said Harvard historian Nancy Cott, "monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion" of the world population, found in "just Western Europe and little settlements in North America."
It turns out you can belong to the most exclusive judicial ninesome in the world and not actually be smarter than a fifth grader. Indeed, the Supreme Court gets facts wrong
all the time (you've heard of Antonin Scalia, right?), so Kennedy's a-historical view of marriage is no surprise. We can only hope that Kennedy's later remarks about how denying marriage rights to same-sex couples
would affront their dignity swing him back toward the side of the good guys here. After all, it's a decision he'll have to live with for millennia.