Lyle Denniston a reporter for the SCOTUS Blog has analyzed the oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court in the cases that are known as Oberagefell v. Hodges. In this analysis, Denniston states that Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will be the deciding vote on whether same-sex couples will be allowed to get married.
The author noted that Justice Kennedy was uncomfortable with this narrow definition of marriage.
The State’s lawyer, John Jay Bursch of Michigan stated in his argument, “the state’s entire interest springs out of the fact that we want to forever link children with their biological mom and dad when that’s possible.”
The couple’s lawyer, Mary L. Bonauto of Boston summed up,
I have to say, one casualty of the marriage litigation is an impoverished view of what is marriage, and what is the role of biological procreation. The state’s entire premise here is that, if same-sex couples marry, then different-sex couples won’t and have their children in a marriage. Those two could not be further apart.
The federal government’s view is that the Court should rule in favor of the same-sex marriage, based upon the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of legal equality. The Supreme Court must now render an opinion in the coming weeks.