I don’t really understand the SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage. If marriage is a religious institution or construct, how can the government blatantly violate the 1^st Amendment, and tell the Church how it should define marriage – interfering with the Church’s free exercise of religion? Further, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has to do with the equal application of specific laws, within their domains of applicability. In other words, state level murder laws in Florida, must be applied equally to all individuals in the state of Florida: the 14^th Amendment does not require state level murder laws in Florida, to be equally applied to citizens in California, resulting in chaos in the applicability of state level or local laws. What the SCOTUS ruling effectively did, was took state marriage laws from an undefined liberal state, and rammed it down the throats of all other states, in violation of the 10^th Amendment.

I don’t see how the courts can get around the fact that marriage is a religious construct (which has been regarded as such since the beginning of this country) that is out of the purview of the government. State laws have long supported marriage, but the definition of marriage has long been established by the Church and other religious institutions, for thousands of years. No government institution, according to the 1^st Amendment, has the right to override the Church and other religious institutions in how they define marriage.

Lastly, if two members of the same sex have the right to marriage as a man and a woman, where does it end? Do polyamorous relationships also have the right to marriage protection? What about incestuous relationships? What about beastiality? Does every conceivable relationship (no matter how morally repugnant) have a right to marriage protection?

If states want to create civil unions that do not involve the Church: I see nothing stopping them. But it is the Church (and other religious institutions) that have the right to define marriage, and thousands of years of success at it, should not be dismissed as some kind of unfairness or even bigotry, but rather as reasonableness and intellectual soundness.