A right to Marry?

California Law Review

Volumn 98, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 667-696

  Nussbaum, Martha C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 78649536316     PISSN: 00081221     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (102)

1. 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967).
2. JOHN STUART MILL, THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN 86 (Susan B. Okin ed., Hackert Publ'ing Co. 1988) (1869). Mill is speaking here of making marriage equal between the sexes, but the point applies, I believe, to the case at hand.
3. See ELECTIONS DIV., OFFICE OF SEC'Y OF STATE, STATEMENT OF VOTE: NOVEMBER 2008 GENERAL ELECTION 6 (2008), http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2008- general/sov-complete.pdf (official declaration of approval of Proposition 8, eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry).
4. Id. (official declaration of approval of Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals).
5. Strauss v. Horton, 207 P.3d 48 (Cal. 2009).
6. As we'll see in Part V, infra pp. 690-94, this has been explicitly established for prison inmates and noncustodial parents who fail to pay child support, perhaps the most extreme cases, in that states actually sought to deny marriage to these classes of people.
7. Welcome to the Universal Life Church Ministry, http://www.themonastery. org (last visited Apr. 7, 2010).
8. Sheri & Bob Stritof, Applying for a Marriage License in Massachusetts, ABOUT.COM, http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/p/ massachusetts.hrm (last visited Apr. 7, 2010).
9. JOHN MILTON, THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE 27 (1820);
10. see also infra text accompanying note 23.
11. See, e.g., Ed Hornick, Obama, McCain Talk Issues at Pastor's Forum, CNN, Aug. 17, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/16/warren.forum/;
12. Allie Martin, Spreading Obama's Wealth to Pro-Life Ministries, ONENEWSNOW.COM, Jan. 14, 2009, http://www.onenewsnow.com/Election2008/Default. aspx?id.
13. See, e.g., Christine Nelson, Nat'l Conference of State Legs., Civil Unions and Domestic Partnership Statutes, http://www.ncsl.org/Default.aspx? TabId=4244 (last visited Apr. 7,2010).
14. See generally PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUB. LIFE, RELIGIOUS GROUPS' OFFICIAL POSITIONS ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE (2010), http://pewforum.org/Gay- Marriage-and-Homosexuality/Religious-Groups-Official-Positions-on-Same-Sex- Marriage.aspx.
15. Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419 (1996) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7 (2006), 28 U.S.C. § 1738C (2006)).
16. See, e.g.. Brief for Defendant United States of America, Smelt v. United States, No. SACV09-00286 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 24, 2009).
17. See, e.g., Obama Writes Open Letter to America's Gays, WONKETTE.COM, http://wonkette.com/362023/obama-writes-open-letter-to-americas-gays (last visited Apr. 7, 2010) ("I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act....").
18. 142 Cong. Rec. S10109 (Sept. 10, 1996) (statement of Sen. Byrd).
19. Deuteronomy 5:6-21.
20. See generally DAVID HALPERIN, The Democratic Body: Prostitution and Citizenship in Classical Athens, in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF HOMOSEXUALITY: AND OTHER ESSAYS ON GREEK LOVE 88 (1990).
21. See SUSAN TREGGIARI, ROMAN MARRIAGE (1991). Her study of grave inscriptions, inter alia, gives rich evidence of what people sought in marriage and thought good to say about their marriages.
22. See the excellent treatment of marital norms in CRAIG ARTHUR WILLIAMS, ROMAN HOMOSEXUALITY (1999).
23. See, e.g., GORDON S. WOOD, THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 103 (1993).
24. Letter from Marcus Tulius Cicero to Atticus (May 5 or 6, 50 BCE), in 3 CICERO'S LETTERS TO ATTICUS (D.R. Shackleton Bailey ed. & trans., 1968) (numbered as letter 94). I base my version on the wonderful translation of D. R. Shackleton Bailey for the Loeb Classical Library, though with some alterations. The word I translate "sympathy" is humanitas, for Cicero a key virtue, involving empathetic understanding and delicacy of manner.
25. MILTON, supra note 9, at 27.
26. Id. at 55.
27. In this section, I draw primarily on NANCY F. COTT, PUBLIC VOWS: A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE AND THE NATION (2000)
28. and HENDRIK HARTOG, MAN AND WIFE IN AMERICA: A HISTORY (2000).
29. HARTOG, supra note 25, at 19.
30. See, e.g., COTT supra note 25, at 36-40.
31. See id. at 18-19.
32. See HARTOG, supra note 25, at 14 (discussing the proliferation of "divorce mill[s]" in states around the country during the nineteenth century).
33. Id.
34. Id.
35. 28 U.S.C. § 1738C (2006).
36. See ANDREW KOPPELMAN, SAME SEX, DIFFERENT STATES: WHEN SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CROSS STATE LINES (2006).
37. 388 U.S. 1(1967).
38. See Mildred Loving, Remarks Prepared for the 40th Anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Announcement (June 12, 2007), available at http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/gaymarriageinformation/a/Loving.htm.
39. Id.
40. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 644 (1996).
41. See, e.g., Kinney v. Commonwealth, 71 Va. (30 Gratt.) 858, 869 (1878);
42. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389, 404 (1871).
43. On both of these questions, see the wide range of expert testimony summarized in Baehr v. Make, Civ. No. 91-1394, 1996 WL 694235 (Haw. Cir. Ct. Dec. 3, 1996). Remarkably, even the state's own experts for the most part agreed that sexual orientation is not an important indicator of parental fitness.
44. See CHARLES FRIED, MODERN LIBERTY AND THE LIMITATIONS OF GOVERNMENT (2007).
45. For further discussion, see MARTHA C NUSSBAUM, FROM DISGUST TO HUMANITY: SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW ch. 2 (2010).
46. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).
47. See Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963).
48. See, e.g., David Filipov, 5 Years Later, Views Shift Subtly on Gay Marriage, BOSTON GLOBE, NOV. 17, 2008, at A1.
49. For example, the New York Times of October 14, 2008, the day I first drafted this paragraph, carried a letter from a laicized Roman Catholic priest to this effect. Frank Reardon, Letter to the Editor, Same-Sex Marriage and the Rights of Citizenship, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 14, 2008, atA28.
50. 388 U.S. 1, 6 (1967).
51. Id. at 4.
52. Id. at 11.
53. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 644 (1996).
54. Kerrigan v. Comm'r of Pub. Health, 957 A.2d 407, 445-46 (Conn. 2008) (internal citation omitted.).
55. Throughout this section I have learned a lot from the excellent examination of this question in Cass R. Sunstein, The Right to Marry, 26 CARDOZO L. REV. 2081 (2005); though I differ with its analysis in several ways, it lays out the issue with incisiveness and clarity.
56. 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (internal quotations omitted).
57. Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 384, 386 (1978).
58. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).
59. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987).
60. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923).
61. 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967).
62. 434 U.S. at 386.
63. Id. at 390-91.
64. See 482 U.S. at 98-99.
65. Id. at 91-93.
66. 401 U.S. 371, 374 (1971).
67. 419 U.S. 393 (1975).
68. See 28 U.S.C. § 1783C (2006).
69. See, e.g., Ohio v. Lowe, 861 N.E.2d 512 (Ohio 2007).
70. Even in the extreme case of uncle and niece marriage, allowed for Jews in Rhode Island on religious grounds, the binding nature of the marriage outside that state has been established.
71. See 482 U.S. 78 (1987).
72. Id. at 96.
73. In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d 384 (Cal. 2008), superseded by state constitutional amendment, CAL. CONST., art. I, §7.5,
74. as recognized in Strauss v. Horton, 207 P.3d 48 (Cal. 2009);
75. Kerrigan v. Comm'r of Pub. Health, 957 A.2d 407 (Conn. 2008);
76. Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W.2d 862 (Iowa 2009).
77. Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 427.
78. Goodridge, 798 N.E. 2d at 961.
79. Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 400.
80. See Varnum, 763 N.W.2d at 876-77.
81. Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 435.
82. See Varnum, 763 N.W.2d at 876-77.
83. Goodridge, 798 N.E.2d at 953.
84. Id. at 960-66.
85. See Kerrigan v. Comm'r of Pub. Health, 957 A.2d 407,431-32 (Conn. 2008);
86. Varnum, 763 N.W.2d at 895-96.
87. Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 440.
88. I discuss these two different approaches to heightened scrutiny in my book FROM DISGUST TO HUMANITY, supra note 41, at ch. 4.
89. Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 442-43;
90. Kerrigan, 957 A.2d at 426.
91. See Kerrigan, 957 A.2d at 446.
92. See id.
93. Id.
94. Id. at 478.
95. See Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W.2d 862, 876 (Iowa 2009).
96. Act of Apr. 15, 1998, 1998 Iowa Legis. Serv. 1099 (1998) (amending IOWA CODE § 595.2 (1998)).
97. Varnum, 763 N.W.2d at 877. (discussing In re Ralph, 1 Morris 1 (Iowa 1839)).
98. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (18 How.) 393 (1856).
99. Varnum, 763 N.W.2d at 877
100. (citing Admission of Women to the Bar, 1 CHI. L. TIMES 76, 76 (1887)).
101. Id. (internal citations omitted).
102. MICHAEL WARNER, THE TROUBLE WITH NORMAL: SEX, POLITICS, AND THE ETHICS OF QUEER LIFE 81-148 (1999).