This article was written by Jeremiah Keenan and published in The Federalist.
In late January, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a memorandum calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to “reverse” its 2015 gay marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, “and restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.”
The memo passed 46 to 24 in the House and is heading to the Idaho Senate. If it passes the senate, it will be sent on to the Supreme Court as one more formal encouragement that it take up a case that might overturn Obergefell.
The memo excoriates the “illegitimate overreach” in Obergefell, arguing that the decision redefined marriage in direct opposition to its natural, age-old definition, one also enshrined in Idaho’s state constitution.
The argument might seem 10 years late, but it comes at a time when — after the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade and the reinstallation of Trump — the Supreme Court might be receptive to such a call.
Back in 2020, sitting justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito argued that the Obergefell decision should be overturned — or at least fixed. The justices agreed that Obergefell had no basis at all in the 14th Amendment. The decision functions as law, overriding state and previous federal law to redefine the essence of marriage in a manner at odds with all major religions on earth. Obergefell rode rough-shod over these religions and dozens of state constitutions on the bases of a moral — not legal — opinion that the traditional definition of marriage espouses “a bigoted worldview,” at the dissenting opinion described it.
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