These cases ask us to decide whether the Fourteenth
Amendment contains a limitation that requires the States
to license and recognize marriages between two people of
the same sex. Does it remove that issue from the political
process?

Of course not. It would be surprising to find a prescription
regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since,
as the author of today’s opinion reminded us only two
years ago (in an opinion joined by the same Justices who
join him today):

“[R]egulation of domestic relations is an area that has
long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of
the States.”10

“[T]he Federal Government, through our history, has
deferred to state-law policy decisions with respect to
domestic relations.”11

But we need not speculate. When the Fourteenth
Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited
marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted
the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these
cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a
vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of
law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable
that the People who ratified that provision did not understand
it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal
and uncontroversial in the years after ratification.12
We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not
expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text,
and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open,
widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the
Amendment’s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever
that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation
of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate
over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue.
But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking
even a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries
and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a
candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the
People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those
rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,”
thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect.13
That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified
the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did
not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions . . . . ”14

One would think that sentence would
continue: “. . . and therefore they provided for a means by
which the People could amend the Constitution,” or perhaps
“. . . and therefore they left the creation of additional
liberties, such as the freedom to marry someone of the
same sex, to the People, through the never-ending process
of legislation.” But no. What logically follows, in the
majority’s judge-empowering estimation, is: “and so they
entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the
right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”15
The “we,” needless to say, is the nine of us. “History
and tradition guide and discipline [our] inquiry but do
not set its outer boundaries.”16 Thus, rather than focusing
on the People’s understanding of “liberty”—at the time of
ratification or even today—the majority focuses on four
“principles and traditions” that, in the majority’s view,
prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution
consisting of one man and one woman.17


...

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in
today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose
today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that
every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135
years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification
and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in
2003.20 They 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. They see what lesser legal minds—
minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis,
William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black,
Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly—
could not. They are certain that the People ratified the
Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to
remove questions from the democratic process when that
is called for by their “reasoned judgment.”

...

Even if the doctrine of substantive due process were
somehow defensible—it is not—petitioners still would not
have a claim. To invoke the protection of the Due Process
Clause at all—whether under a theory of “substantive” or
“procedural” due process—a party must first identify a
deprivation of “life, liberty, or property.” The majority
claims these state laws deprive petitioners of “liberty,” but
the concept of “liberty” it conjures up bears no resemblance
to any plausible meaning of that word as it is used
in the Due Process Clauses.

As used in the Due Process Clauses, “liberty” most likely
refers to “the power of loco-motion, of changing situation,
or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own
inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint,
unless by due course of law.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries
on the Laws of England 130 (1769) (Blackstone).
That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the
Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and
structure.

...

The Framers drew heavily upon Blackstone’s formulation,
adopting provisions in early State Constitutions that
replicated Magna Carta’s language, but were modified to
refer specifically to “life, liberty, or property.”3 State decisions interpreting these provisions between the founding
and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
almost uniformly construed the word “liberty” to refer only
to freedom from physical restraint. See Warren, The New
“Liberty” Under the Fourteenth Amendment, 39 Harv.
L. Rev. 431, 441–445 (1926). Even one case that has been
identified as a possible exception to that view merely used
broad language about liberty in the context of a habeas
corpus proceeding—a proceeding classically associated
with obtaining freedom from physical restraint. Cf. id., at
444–445.
In enacting the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,
the Framers similarly chose to employ the “life, liberty, or
property” formulation, though they otherwise deviated
substantially from the States’ use of Magna Carta’s language
in the Clause. See Shattuck, The True Meaning of
the Term “Liberty” in Those Clauses in the Federal and
State Constitutions Which Protect “Life, Liberty, and
Property,” 4 Harv. L. Rev. 365, 382 (1890). When read in
light of the history of that formulation, it is hard to see
how the “liberty” protected by the Clause could be interpreted
to include anything broader than freedom from
physical restraint. That was the consistent usage of the
time when “liberty” was paired with “life” and “property.”
See id., at 375. And that usage avoids rendering superfluous
those protections for “life” and “property.”
If the Fifth Amendment uses “liberty” in this narrow
sense, then the Fourteenth Amendment likely does as
well. See Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 534–535
(1884). Indeed, this Court has previously commented,
“The conclusion is . . . irresistible, that when the same
phrase was employed in the Fourteenth Amendment [as
was used in the Fifth Amendment], it was used in the
same sense and with no greater extent.” Ibid. And this Court’s earliest Fourteenth Amendment decisions appear
to interpret the Clause as using “liberty” to mean freedom
from physical restraint. In Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113
(1877), for example, the Court recognized the relationship
between the two Due Process Clauses and Magna Carta,
see id., at 123–124, and implicitly rejected the dissent’s
argument that “‘liberty’” encompassed “something more
. . . than mere freedom from physical restraint or the
bounds of a prison,” id., at 142 (Field, J., dissenting). That
the Court appears to have lost its way in more recent
years does not justify deviating from the original meaning
of the Clauses.

Even assuming that the “liberty” in those Clauses encompasses
something more than freedom from physical
restraint, it would not include the types of rights claimed
by the majority. In the American legal tradition, liberty
has long been understood as individual freedom from
governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental
entitlement.

Quoted:The thing to remember is the verb form of 'amendment' is 'amend', and a synonym for 'amend' is 'change'. So past the BOR, you're looking at a sequential progression of changes that modify the original document, with latter ones taking precedent over conflicting earlier ones.   This is why we now have individual income tax, direct election of senators, blacks as citizens, women voting, and a BOR incorporated against state and local governments. We also have an interesting case of two changes conflicting, where the latter 21st change specifically nullified the earlier 18th change. My concern really, is that we're in far enough of a gray area where reasonable people can disagree, and the legal reasoning had become more interpretitive instead of explicit. I thing long term it may have been better to work the legislative side, seeing as how rapidly opinion was changing. I say that even considering how the issue impacts me, as before I had no real way to have a truly inviolate marriage. Many states would have only allowed me to marry a man, and yet I still ran the risk of any such marriage being invalidated due to my birth status.

The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the
Constitution, but with the principles upon which our
Nation was built.   - Thomas


I write separately
to call attention to this Court’s threat to American
democracy.

....

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed,
super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds
with our system of government. Except as limited by a
constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the
States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even
those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.”
A system of government that makes the People
subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does
not deserve to be called a democracy.    - Scalia


Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step
of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex
marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I
begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe
in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach
is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sex
marriage have achieved considerable success persuading
their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to
adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have
closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage
as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from
the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage,
making a dramatic social change that much more
difficult to accept. The majority’s decision is an act of will,
not legal judgment.
The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution
or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly
disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of
humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society
according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of
injustice.” Ante, at 11, 23. As a result, the Court invalidates
the marriage laws of more than half the States and
orders the transformation of a social institution that has
formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the
Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians
and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?    - Roberts

Showing a possible backlash to judicial decisions favoring gay marriage, the percentage of registered voters in Kentucky opposing it has increased to 57 percent this month compared to 50 percent in July.

A Bluegrass Poll conducted March 3-8 shows that support for gay marriage also has dropped, from 37 percent to 33 percent.

Quoted:Now, if you are doing it for one couple, you have to do it for all of them.

Quoted:Amendment XIV
Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

  ...

III
Under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, no State shall “deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The
fundamental liberties protected by this Clause include
most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

...

Applying these established tenets, the Court has long
held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution.
In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12 (1967), which invalidated
bans on interracial unions, a unanimous Court held
marriage is “one of the vital personal rights essential to
the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

...

These considerations lead to the conclusion that the
right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the
liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment

...

Quoted:And it is part of the 'dissent' for a reason. Like it or not, the government can't be arbitrary in how it deals with issuing all the various things it does issue. The question at hand is what exactly falls under being "arbitrary" or not.  

Majority Opinion - Kennedy:

...

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it
in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified
the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not
presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions,
and so they entrusted to future generations a charter
protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we
learn its meaning. When new insight reveals discord
between the Constitution’s central protections and a received
legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.  

....

This dynamic also applies to same-sex marriage. It is
now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of
same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged
that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the
marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence
unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits
afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising
a fundamental right. Especially against a long
history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to
same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and
continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays
and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them.
And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process
Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the
fundamental right to marry. See, e.g., Zablocki, supra, at
383–388; Skinner, 316 U. S., at 541.
These considerations lead to the conclusion that the
right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the
liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment
couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right
and that liberty. The Court now holds that same-sex
couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No
longer may this liberty be denied to them. Baker v. Nelson
must be and now is overruled, and the State laws challenged
by Petitioners in these cases are now held invalid
to the extent they exclude same-sex couples from civil
marriage on the same terms and conditions as oppositesex
couples.

...

Of course, the Constitution contemplates that democracy
is the appropriate process for change, so long as that
process does not abridge fundamental rights. Last Term,
a plurality of this Court reaffirmed the importance of the
democratic principle in Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U. S. ___
(2014), noting the “right of citizens to debate so they can
learn and decide and then, through the political process,
act in concert to try to shape the course of their own
times.” Id., at ___ – ___ (slip op., at 15–16). Indeed, it is
most often through democracy that liberty is preserved
and protected in our lives. But as Schuette also said,
“[t]he freedom secured by the Constitution consists, in one
of its essential dimensions, of the right of the individual
not to be injured by the unlawful exercise of governmental
power.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15). Thus, when the rights
of persons are violated, “the Constitution requires redress
by the courts,” notwithstanding the more general value of
democratic decisionmaking. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 17).
This holds true even when protecting individual rights
affects issues of the utmost importance and sensitivity.
The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals
need not await legislative action before asserting a
fundamental right. The Nation’s courts are open to injured
individuals who come to them to vindicate their own
direct, personal stake in our basic charter. An individual
can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or
she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and
even if the legislature refuses to act. The idea of the
Constitution “was to withdraw certain subjects from the
vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond
the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them
as legal principles to be applied by the courts.” West Virginia
Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 638 (1943).
This is why “fundamental rights may not be submitted to
a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” Ibid


....

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. It
would misunderstand these men and women to say they
disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do
respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its
fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned
to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s
oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the
eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit is reversed.

Quoted:I think Loving v. VA was probably a stronger and more explicit case, while this one may be a little too tenous for my liking. I would have much rather gone a legislative route, given the changing opinions. It wouldnt have taken that long, plus it would have been less contentious.

Marriage, as creating the most important relation in life, as having more to do with the morals and civilization of a people than any other institution, has always been subject to the control of the legislature. That body prescribes the age at which parties may contract to marry, the procedure or form essential to constitute marriage, the duties and obligations it creates, its effects upon the property rights of both, present and prospective, and the acts which may constitute grounds for its dissolution.

With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question
properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly
based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a
bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to
being reminded of our impotence.