Do 49% of Republicans really support same-sex marriage?

[TrumpBritt24]

There's no way.

Fun Fact: A similar percentage of Mississippi Republicans want to ban interracial marriage as of just a decade or so ago.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Many "support" it in the sense I do.  I believe that the Obergefell decision is awful and I stand on Scripture when I say that God does not sanction SSM.  But I don't wish the legal nightmare of undoing what has been done.  As long as my arm isn't being twisted to silence my Scriptural take on this issue, I'm OK.  But people should not be forced or coerced into silence or into stating something they do not believe.

[DrScholl]

49% of them probably don't even believe gay people should have human rights. I recall a conservative trying to get an initiative on the ballot in California to put gay people to death. Of course they do make exceptions for gay Trump supporters.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

To be fair, your favorite recent President was on the "wrong" side of the issue just a decade ago.  Why would you expect the racists and olds to come to the right so quickly?  We should be happy with half of them, even if it's that high for less than optimal reasons.

Also to be fair, Obama was lying his ass off because endorsing SSM would have caused him to lose religious black supporters (and with them, the primary) to Clinton. I was thirteen during that primary and even I didn't believe a damn word of it. But that's politics for you.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

As I stated before Bush W ran on SSM bans in 2084/ and it cost Kerry OH, IA and NM. It came home to roost for Rs in 2006/ with Foley and Hassert scandales and 2008 when Coleman lost his Senate seat due to Gay Larry Craig in MN

They are called Log Cabin Rs, Foley, Hassert and Larry Craig were

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Eric Trump, Foley, Dennis Hassert, all was dealing with the Gay issue and Jim Jordan as well so it's in the R party, they are called Log Cabin Rs

We all remember Larry Craig that doomed Coleman chances of reelection since the incident occurred in MN, the site of RNC and Craig didn't resign, we never heard from him again

That is probably way down the list of things that cost Coleman the election, compared to the economy, the war etc etc.

[Cashew]

Let's give Republicans credit here - a large portion of the secular wing of the party has evolved on the issue in the past 10 years, just as white liberals have. Sure, some Republicans merely accept it as the law of the land, but that is enough. Many Democrats still don't care about it as a civil rights issue. You can't force people to like each other, and as long as they respect the legal outcome, that's all that matters.

Yes a large portion do the party has evolved..... And yet their elected officials remain almost unanimously again at it or at best silent while continuing to obstruct further progress. All that changing opinion is almost worthless if they simply roll over and refuse to fight anti ssm Republicans to create a party more representative of their views. The same applies for all the pro weed legalization Republicans, pro minimum wage Republicans, Republicans who believe in climate change, and so on.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There are a lot of things that Republicans support that their politicians don't. It is one of many areas of disconnect.

[politicallefty]

Nevada had a referendum to remove the anti ssm amendment to their constitution last year and it did 22 points better than Biden in the state.

For that reason, I'm inclined to think the polls are probably overstating support among Republicans. The Nevada referendum didn't just remove the discriminatory language. It also constitutionally protected the right of marriage equality (and reaffirmed the right of religious organizations to refuse to take part in any marriage against their beliefs). It doesn't seem like there was any real campaign on either side. The fact that 37.57% voted against this suggests that a significantly lower number of Republican support.

If every state had an up-or-down referendum like that, it would easily pass in the majority of states. But I could see anywhere from 10-20 states voting it down.

[MarkD]

One, it's insane that in 2021 even I majority don't support it. Second, a substantial portion if not a majority of that 49% " support it" as a fait accompli and nothing more.

Badger was foreshadowing Fuzzy's post:

Many "support" it in the sense I do.  I believe that the Obergefell decision is awful and I stand on Scripture when I say that God does not sanction SSM.  But I don't wish the legal nightmare of undoing what has been done.  As long as my arm isn't being twisted to silence my Scriptural take on this issue, I'm OK.  But people should not be forced or coerced into silence or into stating something they do not believe.

Also see Redjohn's post in this thread. Gallup should re-think how they word questions like these.

Some of us support legalization of same-sex marriage only if the voters and/or the state legislators proactively choose to make it legal, but we oppose the courts making it legal. About 25 years ago, I was attending a Log Cabin Republicans convention in Cincinnati and I listened to Evan Wolfson as he explained what the Hawaii State Supreme Court had done with the case of Baehr v. Lewin. As soon as I heard him explain what legal premise that court had inferred from the Hawaii Constitution, I was instantly opposed to the court's ruling, because I was sure that the legal premise was not at all what the people of Hawaii had intended when they adopted the cited provision of the state constitution. I also anticipated what would happen in Hawaii and I asked Wolfson if it were possible to happen; from the audience I asked him whether the voters of Hawaii could and might vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would prevent the courts from following through and conclusively legalizing same-sex marriage. (In other words, a few years before it happened, I predicted that something like Hawaii Amendment 2 was going to be adopted.) Wolfson's reply was both rude and inaccurate. He told me and the audience, "Oh, don't worry about that. Take it from me that this [the state courts were going to legalize same-sex marriage] is going to happen." Later, in 2003, I bought a book called "Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution," by Evan Gerstmann. The author discussed the Hawaii State Supreme Court's ruling at length in Chapter 3. Gerstmann was strongly critical of the court's opinion, calling it dishonest, and urging his readers to reject the prospect that any court of law should legalize same-sex marriage with such dishonest reasoning. (FYI, the legal reasoning that the Hawaii Supreme Court employed in Baehr was extremely similar to what the SCOTUS ended up using in Bostok v. Clayton County, but not at all similar to what it had used in Obergefell v. Hodges.)

Also in 2003, the state of Massachusetts ended up becoming (instead of Hawaii) the first state to legalize SSM, but it did so via judicial fiat, not the will of the people of that state. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health was handed down by a vote of 4 to 3 of the judges on the state's highest court, and when I read the court's various opinions, I was utterly appalled at how bad a job the majority had done in "interpreting" the Massachusetts Constitution. First of all, I read that the court was insisting it was only interpreting the constitution of the state of Massachusetts, not the U.S. Constitution, but that court nonetheless ended up citing precedents from state courts in Vermont, California, and Hawaii, numerous precedents from the SCOTUS, as well as a precedent from a court in Toronto, Canada. Secondly, the equal protection clause of the Massachusetts state constitution is obviously not worded as broadly as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. The state constitution's provision is much more specific, and it certainly does not refer to sexual orientation. The clause just refers to sex discrimination. Only one of the four judges invoked the explicit sex discrimination clause of the state constitution, and that judge employed legal reasoning extremely similar to the Hawaii court in Baehr (and likewise, similar to the reasoning used by the SCOTUS in Bostok). The other three judges ignored the text of the equal protection clause of the state constitution, and claimed they will employ a rational basis test -- albeit their test would be somewhat more rigorous than the rational basis test that the SCOTUS usually uses. They claimed that they have the authority to make the test more rigorous, although the three dissenting judges proved that, per their court's precedents, they clearly do not have that authority. It was patently absurd for those three judges to claim that the traditional definition of marriage -- between two people of the opposite sex, not the same sex -- has no rational relationship to any legitimate state interest.

Then eventually came United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. To me, the SCOTUS was obviously invoking a premise from the Fourteenth Amendment that had never been the intended meaning of that amendment. If getting married to any other adult you wish to get married to were actually a constitutional "right," the SCOTUS would have struck down laws banning polygamy a long, long time ago. Once the Court started claiming that getting married IS some kind of protected "right," it was calling into question its own precedent about polygamy. Now we have to wonder whether the Court will, in the future, overturn its precedent, and strike down laws that ban polygamy. Maybe it will even strike down laws banning incestuous marriage. The number of Americans who support legalization of these things may even be growing now, thanks to the Supreme Court misinforming us as to what the Fourteenth Amendment protects.

-------

EDIT: Remember that tens of millions of American voters approved of putting bans on SSM into most of the state constitutions. Look at this Wikipedia article that shows which states the voters banned it, when they banned it, and the margin of support among the voters on banning it. All these voters were thwarted by the federal courts that legalized SSM in the name of the U.S. Constitution with an "interpretation" of that document that had never been intended.

I'm bringing this up because I'm sick to death of all the red and maroon avatars who keep saying, at various places in this board (not this thread), that the GOP has become an enemy to "democracy," as if the Democratic Party is, in contrast, fully supportive of "democracy." Most liberals hate "democracy" when voters approve of conservative laws, like in all those state referendums. They applaud rulings like Obergefell v. Hodges, no matter how many tens of millions of American voters were thwarted. Most liberals hate the judicial philosophy of "Original Understanding," as a method of interpreting the Constitution. As the late Judge Robert Bork wrote a little over 30 years ago, "Perhaps those liberals who want a political Court are correct in their confidence that in the modern era judges will usually be more liberal than the electorate. If so, they are right, in terms of their immediate self-interest, to oppose original understanding and judicial nominees who insist upon it. That stance is, however, profoundly antidemocratic and is dangerous to the long-term health of the American Republic." (From Bork's "The Tempting of America," page 178. Emphasis added.)

[Brittain33]

As a middle-aged gay married man, I truly cherish that I can ignore some people’s sad feels about my marriage and the arguments they want to engage in about my life. After decades of dealing with it and other related bigotry when they had the upper hand, I love every minute of tuning it out. People with their strong opinions messed up my high school years and my relationship with my parents who couldn’t deal with a gay son and I’m over it. You all have to find other, more constructive hobbies and issues to fight on. It’s a win win.

[Fuzzy Bear]

As a middle-aged gay married man, I truly cherish that I can ignore some people’s sad feels about my marriage and the arguments they want to engage in about my life. After decades of dealing with it and other related bigotry when they had the upper hand, I love every minute of tuning it out. People with their strong opinions messed up my high school years and my relationship with my parents who couldn’t deal with a gay son and I’m over it. You all have to find other, more constructive hobbies and issues to fight on. It’s a win win.

I don't think you understand some of the "sad feels" about the issue.

Gay Marriage presents a real conundrum for Bible-believing Christians.  There is the issue of being loving toward other people, regardless of their sin, and being concerned for the Eternal Soul of people who are living their lives in direct rebellion to God.  From a Biblical point of view, marriage is an institution ordained by God between one man and one woman, and sexual activity is condoned only between a man and a woman joined in marriage.  We believe that, and I've made the theological argument in many posts over the years.  I understand that not everyone believes the Bible, but I don't understand how anyone can credibly say that Scripture sanctions SSM.

Having said that, Christians who believe Scripture earnestly care for the Eternal fate of all people.  This creates the conundrum.  Most Christians know co-workers who are gay, and most Christians think little of it personally.  As such, Christians are now in situations where a gay family member or coworker announces their impending marriage to a same-sex partner.  What to do?  To quietly dodge the issue would be to (likely) give offense, to say nothing about speaking plainly about the eternal concern for one's soul, and would be perceived as one wishing to deny others the love and commitment of a romantic relationship that the Christian is enjoying with their opposite-sex spouse.  To most people, that sounds cruel.  The reality of a Christian is the reality of knowing that one who chooses their life in direct rebellion to God is rejecting His authority.  This goes to the heart of "belief"; does one truly believe that God is God, indeed?  To a Christian, there are only two (2) classes of people; those who are Saved and those who are Lost and destined for Eternal Separation from God absent the decision to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  In these situations, we are faced a choice between giving temporal (albeit painful) offense and aiding and abetting in a decision for two people to make a decision to cement their status of being in rebellion against God in a posture where those people would reject the correction of God, Himself.

This isn't a mere theory.  There are few people I love as deeply as I love my 15 year old granddaughter who has "come out" as gay (at 13).  She's apparently backed away from that as she now has a boyfriend, and I'm not sure as to what her actual personal situation is, but the idea that I could be in this situation is wrenching, because I love her deeply and unconditionally and want her to know committed love and contentment in her life as I know in my own marriage, but the thought of her being separated from God and spending Eternity in that condition is a horror for me beyond all else as far as she's concerned.  I don't know what I'd do if this situation ever came to pass, and I would need to led God guide me step by step in this. 

It's not an issue of "I can't deal with it!".  It's a question of the Eternity of others for me, and for millions of Christians.  I could care less what the World thinks.  I care very much about my granddaughter's Eternal Destination.  (I care very much about your Eternal Destination, for that matter.  I'm supposed to.)

[Horus]

If you think someone is bound for eternal damnation it's going to change how you implicitly treat them.

[Brittain33]

As a middle-aged gay married man, I truly cherish that I can ignore some people’s sad feels about my marriage and the arguments they want to engage in about my life. After decades of dealing with it and other related bigotry when they had the upper hand, I love every minute of tuning it out. People with their strong opinions messed up my high school years and my relationship with my parents who couldn’t deal with a gay son and I’m over it. You all have to find other, more constructive hobbies and issues to fight on. It’s a win win.

I don't think you understand some of the "sad feels" about the issue.

(snip post I'm not going to read.)

Whether or not that's true, you should derive from my post that I. don't. care. I derive great pleasure in not having to care about these views after being smacked around by them from age 12 into my 30s. I get that a large minority of Americans has very strong feelings about my life and wants government to do things about it, and feels they're being selfless and virtuous good people in doing so. I am incredibly grateful to whatever divinity has caused them to fall into a shrinking minority no longer capable of Inksing up my life and those of others. I'm not watching your soap opera any more and you'll notice most other people under 50 are done with it, too, and that's why almost no one engaged with the original comment. America has moved on and it is a much better place for more people as a result.

[Fuzzy Bear]

If you think someone is bound for eternal damnation it's going to change how you implicitly treat them.

Does the profession of faith in Jesus Christ change how you implicitly treat them?

There are lots of people who would be describes as "good people" who have rejected Christ, the only Name by which one can be Saved.  They are people who try to be honorable and I can evaluate them on that basis.  There are some folks who are unbelievers whose judgement on secular matters I would accept long before some "church people".  There are some Christians who I view as folks as being in need to repent.  (My previous Pastor is squarely in that category.) 

I'm SUPPOSED to be concerned with the condition of the Souls of others: 

15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Being concerned of the Soul of others does not mean that I advocate the use of Government Jackboots to bring the Lost to Christ.  I'm also not going to judge the fate of others.  But I do take the professions of what people believe and the actions that reflect their own beliefs at face value and I do line that up with what Scripture says. 

[Horus]

If you think someone is bound for eternal damnation it's going to change how you implicitly treat them.

Does the profession of faith in Jesus Christ change how you implicitly treat them?

No, the vast majority of my friends and loved ones are Christian. Probably not in your eyes, but fortunately you're not the arbiter of who's a real Christian.

[Fuzzy Bear]

If you think someone is bound for eternal damnation it's going to change how you implicitly treat them.

Does the profession of faith in Jesus Christ change how you implicitly treat them?

No, the vast majority of my friends and loved ones are Christian. Probably not in your eyes, but fortunately you're not the arbiter of who's a real Christian.

What does it take to be a "real Christian"?  How does one become such a thing?  I'm serious; that's perhaps the most important question one can ask?

[Kingpoleon]

I'm bringing this up because I'm sick to death of all the red and maroon avatars who keep saying, at various places in this board (not this thread), that the GOP has become an enemy to "democracy," as if the Democratic Party is, in contrast, fully supportive of "democracy." Most liberals hate "democracy" when voters approve of conservative laws, like in all those state referendums. They applaud rulings like Obergefell v. Hodges, no matter how many tens of millions of American voters were thwarted. Most liberals hate the judicial philosophy of "Original Understanding," as a method of interpreting the Constitution. As the late Judge Robert Bork wrote a little over 30 years ago, "Perhaps those liberals who want a political Court are correct in their confidence that in the modern era judges will usually be more liberal than the electorate. If so, they are right, in terms of their immediate self-interest, to oppose original understanding and judicial nominees who insist upon it. That stance is, however, profoundly antidemocratic and is dangerous to the long-term health of the American Republic." (From Bork's "The Tempting of America," page 178. Emphasis added.)

If the Court fails to protect discrete, insular, and powerless minorities from the powers of the majority, then there is no check against the tyranny of the majority. Neither federal nor state governments can discriminate but for race, even if 90% of the population agrees; see Loving. If the Equal Protection Clause is not taken literally for sex, race, and religion, then it is not an Amendment at all. I understand you dislike it, but judges cannot ignore parts of the Constitution they don’t like.

I understand you oppose a counter-majoritarian Supreme Court, but how do you square that with Loving or opposing Korematsu or Dred Scott? If the Supreme Court will not enforce the Constitution contrary to democratic rule, then it does not enforce the Constitution at all.

[Ferguson97]

Gay Marriage presents a real conundrum for Bible-believing Christians. 

I'm asking them to go cry about it

[MarkD]

I'm bringing this up because I'm sick to death of all the red and maroon avatars who keep saying, at various places in this board (not this thread), that the GOP has become an enemy to "democracy," as if the Democratic Party is, in contrast, fully supportive of "democracy." Most liberals hate "democracy" when voters approve of conservative laws, like in all those state referendums. They applaud rulings like Obergefell v. Hodges, no matter how many tens of millions of American voters were thwarted. Most liberals hate the judicial philosophy of "Original Understanding," as a method of interpreting the Constitution. As the late Judge Robert Bork wrote a little over 30 years ago, "Perhaps those liberals who want a political Court are correct in their confidence that in the modern era judges will usually be more liberal than the electorate. If so, they are right, in terms of their immediate self-interest, to oppose original understanding and judicial nominees who insist upon it. That stance is, however, profoundly antidemocratic and is dangerous to the long-term health of the American Republic." (From Bork's "The Tempting of America," page 178. Emphasis added.)

If the Court fails to protect discrete, insular, and powerless minorities from the powers of the majority, then there is no check against the tyranny of the majority. Neither federal nor state governments can discriminate but for race, even if 90% of the population agrees; see Loving. If the Equal Protection Clause is not taken literally for sex, race, and religion, then it is not an Amendment at all. I understand you dislike it, but judges cannot ignore parts of the Constitution they don’t like.

I understand you oppose a counter-majoritarian Supreme Court, but how do you square that with Loving or opposing Korematsu or Dred Scott? If the Supreme Court will not enforce the Constitution contrary to democratic rule, then it does not enforce the Constitution at all.

Where do you see me saying that there should be no judicial review at all? You clearly do not understand what I meant in my post about the SCOTUS rendering an interpretation of the Constitution that had never been intended. You clearly do not understand why I discussed Judge Robert Bork's philosophy of Original Understanding, which is that all judges have a duty to give the various provisions of the U.S. Constitution the meanings that those provisions were intended to have. I discussed the fact that most liberals (of modern times) object to having judges who adhere to the judicial philosophy of Original Understanding. I was specifically referring to the Court's decisions in Windsor v. United States and Obergefell v. Hodges, and I specifically said that those decisions were not based on what anything in the Constitution was intended to mean.

"Neither federal or state governments can discriminate but for race, even if 90% of the population agrees. ..." You're wrong about the federal government. Which provision of the Constitution is an explicit or clearly implicit requirement that the federal government is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race? Regarding the state governments, I absolutely do agree that racial discrimination is prohibited. That clearly was the originally understood meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. You can go all of the way back to The Slaughterhouse Cases and Strauder v. West Virginia for the Court's clear explanation as to why state governments are prohibited from having racially discriminatory laws. You can go back to Yick Wo v. Hopkins to recognize that racially discriminatory law enforcement practices are also prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause. And so there was nothing wrong with the SCOTUS's unanimous decision in Loving v. Virginia either. That is, there was nothing wrong with the SCOTUS's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause on that occasion, as you can read in Section 1 of the Court's opinion. On the other hand, there was something very, very wrong with the Court's interpretation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Section 2 of the opinion. I am absolutely certain that Justice Hugo Black did not actually agree with Section 2. Hugo Black was one of the rare examples of a liberal who believed that all judges should be bound by the Original Understanding of the various provisions of the Constitution. You can see his dissenting opinions in Griswold v. Connecticut and Harper v. Virginia Board of Education on that score.

"If the Equal Protection Clause is not taken literally for sex, race, and religion, then it is not an Amendment at all. I understand you dislike it, ..." I never came close to saying that I dislike the Equal Protection Clause. What I dislike is judges who interpret that Clause as if it can and must be taken to "literally" mean no discrimination of any and every kind there is, and I dislike judges who give that Clause any meaning that is beyond what it was originally understood to mean. That Clause was intended to address racial discrimination. It was not intended to address sex discrimination; the 14th Amendment was adopted by men who wouldn't even allow women to vote on whether it should be proposed and ratified. The men serving on the SCOTUS for the next generation after the 14th was adopted upheld state laws that prohibited women from becoming lawyers and upheld state laws that prohibited women from voting. The EP Clause wasn't even intended to address religious discrimination; that topic is addressed by the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th, which incorporates the Religion Clauses of the 1st Amendment.

In Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Services, the SCOTUS, by a vote of 6 to 3, upheld the legality and constitutionality of the federal government deporting a man just because he was homosexual. The opinion was written by Justice Tom Clark, and was joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justices Hugo Black, John M. Harlan II, Potter Stewart, and Byron White; the dissenters were Justices William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and Abe Fortas. It was 1967, less than a month before Loving v. Virginia was handed down. Why didn't those six Justices treat homosexuals as if they are a "discrete, insular, and unpopular minority?" Perhaps the answer is because those six Justices were "homophobic." But if they were "homophobic," I would say that the men who adopted the 14th Amendment were at least, if not more, "homophobic," and so were our Founding Fathers. By the way, the federal government is not still deporting homosexuals to this day. The reason it is not doing do is because Congress changed the immigration law in 1990 in such a way as to allow gay people to immigrate to the U.S. Lo and behold, majority rule did not hate homosexuals in 1990!!!!

[Kingpoleon]

"If the Equal Protection Clause is not taken literally for sex, race, and religion, then it is not an Amendment at all. I understand you dislike it, ..." I never came close to saying that I dislike the Equal Protection Clause. What I dislike is judges who interpret that Clause as if it can and must be taken to "literally" mean no discrimination of any and every kind there is, and I dislike judges who give that Clause any meaning that is beyond what it was originally understood to mean. That Clause was intended to address racial discrimination. It was not intended to address sex discrimination; the 14th Amendment was adopted by men who wouldn't even allow to women to vote on whether it should be proposed or ratified. The men serving on the SCOTUS for the next generation after the 14th was adopted upheld state laws that prohibited women from becoming lawyers and upheld state laws that prohibited women from voting. The EP Clause wasn't even intended to address religious discrimination; that topic is addressed by the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th, which incorporates the Religion Clauses of the 1st Amendment.

In Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Services, the SCOTUS, by a vote of 6 to 3, upheld the legality and constitutionality of the federal government deporting a man just because he was homosexual. The opinion was written by Justice Tom Clark, and was joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justices Hugo Black, John M. Harlan II, Potter Stewart, and Byron White; the dissenters were Justices William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and Abe Fortas. It was 1967, less than a month before Loving v. Virginia was handed down. Why didn't those six Justices treat homosexuals as if they are a "discrete, insular, and unpopular minority?" Perhaps the answer is because those six Justices were "homophobic." But if they were "homophobic," I would say that the men who adopted the 14th Amendment were at least, if not more, "homophobic," and so were our Founding Fathers. By the way, the federal government is not still deporting homosexuals to this day. The reason it is not doing do is because Congress changed the immigration law in 1990 in such a way as to allow gay people to immigrate to the U.S. Lo and behold, majority rule did not hate homosexuals in 1990!

It is not that the Fourteenth Amendment abolishes discrimination altogether. It does not do so. But the law is the law, whatever else you might claim.

There are some mistaken people who do not know the story of the Revolution, yourself apparently among them. After the abolition of monarchy in America, the crown did not disappear. There are some people, who call themselves judicial pragmatists, who believe the crown came to rest upon the head of judges. They are mistaken. There are some people, who I would call radical democrats, who believe the crown came to rest upon the head of the people. They are mistaken. There are some people, who are called originalists, who believe the crown came to rest upon the head of lawmakers, especially authors of the Constitution. They are mistaken. In a monarchy, the crown and its person ARE the law. In this republic, the text is the law.

“It matters not a whit that some of the drafters of the 14th Amendment were racist — because they were, or sexist — because they were. The law they drafted promises equal protection of the law to all persons.” - Neil Gorsuch, at his confirmation hearings

If the Supreme Court deferred to your judgment and pretended the Fourteenth Amendment was only about race, they would be, at best, practicing original intent textualism. With the understanding that it connotes at least two categories, race and sex, I venture so far as to say the nineteenth century court got the Fourteenth Amendment wrong. You support how they ruled on sex, but not on race. It defies my understanding of words to pretend that “every person” excludes women. As for the theory, advocated by Robert George, that “but for” discrimination only works if reversed: it has a long history, dating back to Pace v. Alabama. It is an incorrect understanding of the English language designed to produce an outcome which he would prefer.

This is so called wooden legged, eyepatched, swashbuckling pirate textualism. The written word alone is law. Any statement to the contrary would reestablish monarchy and place a crown upon the head of a person or people, exactly where it does not belong.