As I’m quite sure you are getting your daily ration of COVID news, I’ll write my little essay on something entirely different, and won’t even mention COVID. I mean, other than I just did there, you know. Oh, but first: Wear your darn mask! Ok, now, moving on…

We as a state and a nation recently had an anniversary pass by that was little noticed by most folks. It seems that June 26 was the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that all states must legally recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry. At the time, a number of far-right (often evangelical) conservatives seethed about “judicial tyranny” and the end of traditional families. One anti-gay group’s lawyer complained that the court had “ignored the voices of thousands of Americans,” which I guess is true, in that the Court ruled in favor of the rights of millions of other Americans.  But warnings were given by conservative organizations about the impending catastrophe to traditional marriage created by same-sex folks tying the knot.

Five years seems like long enough for the impacts of this alleged societal tsunami to be felt, so I thought I’d take a look at how families in Colorado are doing these days. It turns out that both the marriage rate and the divorce rate in the Centennial State have been declining over the past 10 years or so. It would seem that the worries expressed by those opposed to same-sex marriage have not come to pass. I searched the internet for a single example of a traditional Republican married couple that chose to divorce because of the same-sex decision and came up empty. Whew, I guess we dodged a bullet there. As it turns out, as the comedian Jon Stewart once pointed out, “Gays just want to get married and join the Army, what’s more American than that?”

The key member of the Supreme Court in the Obergefell v. Hodges case was then Justice Anthony Kennedy. Appointed as a conservative by Ronald Reagan in 1988, Kennedy found himself, after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, as the so-called “swing vote” in the ideological middle. Kennedy wrote the Obergefell v. Hodges decision and delivered it for the Court. Fast forward to 2020, and a very odd thing has happened. Kennedy retired and was replaced by alleged legal scholar and noted beer connoisseur Brett Kavanaugh. With that appointment, the court swung far to the right, creating a new “center” position that is far more conservative than in the past few decades.

Imagine, therefore, my surprise by learning which member of the court has decided to be, well, kind of moderate – Chief Justice John Roberts. Didn’t see that one coming. 

Again, it’s not that Roberts is becoming more liberal. Rather, it is that Roberts, in my view, has a respect for history and the role of the court in that history. He cares about precedent and seeks to decide cases with a fuller appreciation of the history of the rule of law. Roberts has actually sided with liberal Justice Kagan more than with Clarence Thomas, albeit on mostly smaller cases. But on several occasions recently, Roberts sided with the four liberals on the Court to create 5-4 decisions on LGBTQ rights, abortion restrictions, and immigration. Roberts has become a bit of a light in the darkness for liberals and a blight to many on the right. But we shouldn’t think that Roberts has undergone a “Harry Blackmun” transformation, at least not yet. Nevertheless, there is room to hope that Roberts will continue to strive to keep partisan political furors behind him. Oh, and don’t forget that Colorado’s own Justice Neil Gorsuch – like Roberts a truly giant legal intellect – sided with the liberals in a 5-4 decision on LGBTQ employee rights recently.

It is likely that we pay too much attention to the U.S. Supreme Court and too little to our own Colorado Supreme Court, just as we pay too much attention to national executive and legislative leaders and too little to those at the state and local level. Remember, the local folks usually impact our lives more (wear your darn mask!). But given the attention the national-level folks get, it isn’t surprising that we pay close attention to them.

And so, I’d like to announce that now, five years after same-sex marriage was made legal, and after careful consideration, my wife and I have decided to… well, stay married. We love each other, so we’re going to stick it out. The impact of same-sex marriage on us has been, well, none really. Our ability to love and laugh, to work and play, has not been diminished one bit. Knowing that somewhere out there a same-sex couple is married, as far as I can tell, hasn’t ruined a single marriage. It’s been five years and as a nation, we just don’t mind.