> What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).
Hopefully this ruling will cause exactly that.
If the churches don't want same-sex "marriage", they now MUST lobby their legislatures to separate marriage from the civil contracts that it is conflated with.
Until this ruling, nobody was going to take up the task. States that might have done this were already legalizing it anyway. States that would be opposed weren't going to spend the time and energy to fight their own constituents.
Now, there will be motivation in the most conservative states to actually get that done.
Hopefully this ruling will cause exactly that.
If the churches don't want same-sex "marriage", they now MUST lobby their legislatures to separate marriage from the civil contracts that it is conflated with.
Until this ruling, nobody was going to take up the task. States that might have done this were already legalizing it anyway. States that would be opposed weren't going to spend the time and energy to fight their own constituents.
Now, there will be motivation in the most conservative states to actually get that done.