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At trial, the judge gave the Lovings two options: Either move out of Virginia for twenty-five years or spend one to three years in jail. The Lovings chose the former. Subsequently, the judge delivered an opinion, which can only be characterized as profound fundamentalist ignorance. He stated,

Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.17

It is unfathomable that a judge entrusted with the protection of our constitutional rights could write such a statement. Fortunately, on appeal the Supreme Court displayed far superior intellect and respect for natural rights and formally recognized the natural right to privacy in regards to marriage. Chief Justice Earl Warren stated, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”18 In other words, a natural right.

While decades ago the Supreme Court formally settled the issue of interracial marriages, the nation is currently engulfed in the battle over same-sex marriages. For the same reasons the government should not interfere with marriages between individuals of various races, the government should not interfere with marriages between individuals of the same sex. What effect do same-sex marriages have on other individuals? As Jefferson might have said, they neither pick your pocket nor break your leg. They do not harm anyone or violate your natural rights.

To Love and to Cherish, Till the State Do Us Part

In 1996, Congress enacted and President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), defining marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife,” and providing that states need not recognize same-sex marriages from other states.19 Currently, thirty-seven states have their own acts similar to DOMA, and two states have stronger language defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.20 Additionally, Section 3 of DOMA relates to the unconstitutional federal benefits married couples receive. In fact, in January 1997 the General Accountability Office issued a report clarifying the impact DOMA has on federal laws. The report concluded that 1,049 federal laws are affected. These laws include those relating to welfare programs such as Social Security, health benefits, and taxation.21 A subsequent study in 2004 found 1,138 federal laws “tied benefits, protections, rights, or responsibilities to marital status.”22 How has the institution of marriage, which governments traditionally never regulated, become an institution tied to more than 1,138 federal laws?

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In 2010, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts found the section of DOMA that permitted states to grant or withhold benefits based on the sexual orientation of one’s marital partner to be unconstitutional because it violated the Equal Protection Clause embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.23 In Gill v. Office of Personnel Management (2010), Judge Joseph L. Tauro embraced the view that the states historically were in charge of requirements for marriage, and it is not a constitutional concern of the federal government; rather, the individual states are to make this determination. Judge Tauro held that DOMA encroaches on “a historically entrenched tradition of federal reliance on state marital status determination.” Moreover, in dismissing the government’s justifications for the Act, Judge Tauro concluded only “irrational prejudice” motivated the classification of same-sex couples as separate from heterosexual couples. Thus, DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment’s mandate of equal protection.

In the companion case to Gill, called Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services