Justice Kennedy’s description of marriage is so conservative

What the victors in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, achieved last week is nothing short of a momentous social victory and the culmination of the most successful public relations campaign in recent memory.

In the days since the ruling, many liberals have been exultant, viewing this win as a sign that progressive culture is on the rise, while traditional values — much to their delight — have plummeted to a well-deserved nadir.

Yet it’s lost on most observers that what the court said about marriage in terms of its importance, meaning and profundity, is — dare I say it — ironically conservative.

Last week my Facebook feed was bursting with comments from friends and relatives hailing the decision. Repeatedly, ecstatic postings referred to what online Slate magazine called “the beautiful closing paragraph of Justice Kennedy’s gay marriage ruling.”

For those who missed it, here it is in part: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.”

Those words are magnificent as they are true.

Marriage is, indeed, the most fundamental social institution, manifesting in its purest and most natural form what we believe human love can and should be: self-giving, enduring, eternal.

Conservatives, especially, should cheer at such a description.

But Kennedy’s lofty rhetoric, so widely cited by members of the social left, is also entirely contrary to what progressive culture has taught us to believe about marriage for the last several decades.

Marriage, they have argued, is an increasingly irrelevant institution and not the idyllic state described by the high court’s liberal majority. No-fault divorce was the first salvo aimed at eroding the bonds of which Kennedy so highly speaks.

Some marriage opponents have gone further, denouncing it as inherently oppressive, patriarchal and undemocratic.

These theories have gained traction, particularly with people of my generation and younger.

I distinctly recall a conversation with a group of women during my freshman year of college. Marriage, several told me, was not only unnecessary, it was meaningless. These women were part of the “it’s just a piece of paper” movement that many of my peers still identify with.

In the words of the Twittersphere, #loveislove. There is no need for government — or society — to sanction it.

Unsurprisingly, the number of couples choosing to cohabitate has dramatically increased, and the social stigma associated with such a choice is but a memory.

Despite abundant social science linking marriage to increased social, education and economic outcomes for children, at an alarming rate, couples are electing to have children outside of marriage. In 2012, more than 40 percent of children were born outside of wedlock.

To codify the arguments for marriage’s irrelevance, liberals have expanded the welfare state, substituting social programs for the economic and social stability that only marriage can provide. In so doing, government is making it increasingly more attractive to be a single parent.

This, too, seems to contravene Kennedy’s argument that marriage, opposite-sex or same-sex, is fundamentally about the protection of children.

Children, Kennedy explained, “suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated to a more difficult and uncertain family life.” Further, marriage “affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests.”

But that’s a belief more often associated with conservatives than liberals.

While many Americans, particularly those who observe a strict reading of the Constitution, will find many errors in the court’s logic, at least one outcome of the decision is conservative: the declaration that marriage is incredibly important, relevant and necessary for the ultimate success of a society.

The pessimist in me does not believe that the court’s decision will catalyze a dramatic reversal in our nation’s marriage culture. But it’s hard to be totally discouraged by the court’s acknowledgment that marriage is so desirable a state of being it should be expanded to all who seek it.

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 7:18 PM with the headline "Justice Kennedy’s description of marriage is so conservative."