Opinion:   “There is no right to marry someone of the same sex, just as there is no right to marry your sister, to marry someone who is under 14 years old, or to marry more than one person.



Fact    The Ninth Amendment declares that the listing of individual rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not meant to be comprehensive; and that other rights not specifically mentioned are retained by the people - like the right to smirk, or smile. Constitutions aren't complete lists of civil rights, they are lists of instances in which the citizenry, through their elected representatives, have formalized the rights which always existed, but had previously been wrongly denied.

The 13th Amendment did not say "hey, enslaved people are now fully free and human", it said those people always were fully human and should have been fully free, and the amendment denied anyone the right to limit that freedom. Civil rights are inherent, not given.

Prohibitions against marrying a sister, or a 12-year-old, are laws upheld due to compelling public interest, and which have changed radically over time. Polygamy and poligyny laws have varied widely over the centuries, even within cultures. Rights are assumed to exist if Constitutions prohibit their denial, or if Courts rule against them. This is why, if courts rule in favor of rights not specifically denied by Constitutions, the courts are not necessarily guilty of 'activism'. An honest, democratic court must evaluate all appeals for rights using the governing Constitution as a guide. This illustrates the Supreme Court's thinking in deciding, in 1967, that Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial couple in Virginia, actually did have a right to marry, even though public opinion argued they did not. Those justices were not guilty of activism, but of evaluating the case based on compelling government interests, and finding none, they were required to decide as they did.

In a thriving, not crumbling, democracy, the burden of proof is on those interested in denying rights. Black Americans did not have the burden of proving that they deserved to be free citizens. It's bewildering to even imagine what that television ad campaign would have looked like. In the absence of a compelling civil interest, the rights are formalized by default.