News & Reporting

An Ohio court has given the US Supreme Court an offer on same-sex marriage that the high court likely can't refuse.

After the Supreme Court sidestepped the issue of a national right to same-sex marriage in 2013, experts on both sides predicted the court would intervene in October. The high court had several promising cases to choose from, but decided to stay on the sidelines. All pending appeals were rejected without explanation.

Yesterday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati became the likely game changer.

In a 2-1 split decision hailed by the National Organization for Marriage as a "tremendous victory," the Sixth Circuit ruled that states do have the authority to set rules for marriage in several areas. All six statutory and constitutional provisions were upheld relating to: same-sex marriage bans, refusing recognition of out-of-state marriages, denying adoption, and not allowing two same-gender spouses on birth and death certificates.

The cases at hand came out of Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

“Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority,” Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote in the decision, “one that would allow just three of us—just two of us in truth—to make such a vital policy call for 32 million citizens who live within the four states of the 6th Circuit."

Sutton noted:

When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers. Better, in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.

The decision deems it “dangerous and demeaning to the citizenry” if judges feel they ...

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