After the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage, journalists rushed to show an America that agrees with them [1] – but the win wasn’t one-sided.
One or two dissenting opinions is common for the Supreme Court. Four? Not so much. When the Court ruled in favor of gay marriage Friday in Obergefell v. Hodges [2] 5-4, all four dissenting justices (John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas) wrote opinions decrying the decision of the majority.
But that wasn’t the media’s focus as journalists celebrated their hard-fought victory [3] with “inspirational” quotes from Kennedy and ridicule of the dissenting justices. Here are the top 15 quotes Americans need to hear from the dissenting justices – lines the media won’t broadcast:
On defining marriage:
"This universal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is no historical coincidence."
-Justice Roberts
"For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate."
-Justice Alito
On the role of the Court:
"Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law."
-Justice Roberts
"Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court."
-Justice Scalia
"A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy."
-Justice Scalia
On the logical inconsistency of the majority:
"The five Justices who compose today’s majority... have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since." [sarc.]
-Justice Scalia
"The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop-philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis."
-Justice Scalia
On liberty:
"I do not doubt that my colleagues in the majority sincerely see in the Constitution a vision of liberty that happens to coincide with their own."
-Justice Alito
"As a philosophical matter, liberty is only freedom from governmental action, not an entitlement to governmental benefits."
-Justice Thomas
On the method of the Court:
"The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built." -Justice Thomas
"The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie."
-Justice Scalia
On the consequences:
"Indeed, from the standpoint of history and tradition, a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a two-person union to plural unions."
-Justice Roberts
"The majority's decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect."
-Justice Thomas
"I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools."
-Justice Alito
"The decision will also have other important consequences. It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy."
-Justice Alito
Fifteen plus one:
Media widely circulated certain quotes, including what the Washington Post's Amber Phillips called [4] a "strongly worded reprimand":
"If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision... But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it." -Justice Roberts
— Katie Yoder is Staff Writer, Joe and Betty Anderlik Fellow in Culture and Media at the Media Research Center. Follow Katie Yoder on Twitter. [5]