When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively allowing Missouri and other red states to immediately outlaw abortion, many who supported that decision scoffed at warnings that same-sex marriage and even interracial marriage rights could be next. Now, as congressional Democrats and some Republicans push legislation to protect marriage at the federal level, opposition from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and other conservatives shows that there is, in fact, a genuine threat to existing marriages.
In overturning Roe earlier this year, the court’s conservative majority rejected Roe’s constitutional underpinning, which was that the 14th Amendment provides a right to individual privacy from intrusion by the federal government or the states. The problem is, that’s the same legal theory the court attached to separate rulings guaranteeing other rights — to same-sex relationships and marriage, to interracial marriage, to contraception. To deny one on that basis is to put the others in jeopardy.
Justice Samuel Alito stressed in his majority opinion that overturning Roe didn’t affect those other rights. But Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion that it should lead to reconsideration of rights to same-sex marriage and contraception. (Notably, Thomas didn’t mention the right to interracial marriages like his own.)
