Yes.And those "merits," whatever they may be, would never even be presented to the judicial system if its proponents hadn't been emboldened, as you said, by the previous overturning of other marital restrictions.
There's almost always a shift in the willingness of a society to self-examine preceding challenges on significant Constitutional grounds. True of slavery (though less successfully) and true now. But the litmus will always be a Constitutional and not social one. Essentially, you can't open a door that you don't or won't see, but once someone walks through it an argument over its existence becomes harder to manage.
But that bit of logic won't stop people who, having seen marriage successfully redefined once, will seek to have it redefined to suit their own perverse views.
Again though, it's not being redefined. We still know exactly what we mean by marriage with or without the legal inclusion. The thing itself remains.
Yes, that's what it meant to the people entering it,
I doubt people entering into it considered their orientation as a part of it. It meant either a secular or religious (or likely both for most) joining of two lives to form something new and promising, as an expression of love and an intent to hold one another and that relationship apart from any other.
and that's what it meant to those writing the word "marriage" in state laws. Same sex marriage, implicit in those laws, was an oxymoron. There was no need to explicitly forbid it any more than there's a need to outlaw 4-sided triangles. It's ruled out, by definition of the term.
Again, the marriage contract is pretty explicit in terms of what it required. Those terms indicate what people considered important and necessary about it. There were any number of reasons why sexuality/gender wouldn't be a consideration, from cultural/social/contextual assumption, to religious objections, to legal impediments (homosexuality itself being outlawed in many jurisdictions) to simple phobia, etc. But no one established gender as a requirement by law. Once the assumption or bias was challenged many states scrambled to do it, but that overturns any legal tradition argument that can be advanced. Meaning the remaining arguments need another approach.
Religion isn't going to work and that was the inevitable problem with the anti side of things. Religious objection, however veiled, was largely it. Legally, to the extent you could argue it, the foundational objections were atop equally objectionable law, like laws that criminalized homosexual sex, themselves rooted in religious belief.
That could be. But why worsen it?
Worse to whom and in what way? Or, that's what many people said and believed about race mixing laws being abolished. And many of them predicated their views on faith as well.
Look at, for example, the public perception of abortion. It's become more and more acceptable since Roe V. Wade, no?
It's varied, really. Looking at gallup data from 75 to present day there hasn't been dramatic variations. F
Let's look at the three principle divisions of opinion on abortion, highly restricted, unrestricted, and completely forbidden.
Highly restricted: In 1975, 54% of the public said abortion should be allowed only in very particular circumstances. That opinion was weakest in 94, when only 48% agreed, and strongest in 98, when around 68% agreed with that level of restriction. By 2010 it was 57% and today around 50%. Or, a little stronger today than in 75. So it's been a cycle of sorts, with the overwhelming majority of the time spent in the low 50s.
Unrestricted: in 75 that would have translated to around 22% and today it's 29%. The high point of that belief is in 94, when 34% of the public had that degree of hands off approach to the topic. So it's higher than 75 and significantly lower than 94.
Forbidden: Illegal in any circumstance was at 21% in 75 and is at 18% now. Between 91 and 99 it was at its lowest ebb, around 15%.
So it doesn't really appear that Roe has softened public opinion, which has cycled up and down since. Forbidden is three pts weaker now after 42 years, or 3% stronger than it was for nearly a decade, a couple of decades after Roe. Similarly, unrestricted is 7% higher than it was right after Roe, or 5% lower/weaker than it was in the 90s, while strict limitations is 4% weaker now than 75, or 2% stronger than it was in 94...or much weaker than 98.
Doesn't appear to be much of a causal impact.
I agree. There are many other affronts to marriage and family.
Affronts to one expression of what a family should be. Some people wouldn't credit a family without kids. Some would have problems with interracial families. Some might object to adoptive families. But each family once denied and now allowed wouldn't see it that way.
Not according to Catholic teaching.
That's peculiar to me. How can a union predicated on a lack of belief in God be sanctified? Or is it just those who have another belief in a different idea about God? And if that's the case what about homosexuals who have a different belief about what God is or sanctions?
The only related point that it addresses is whether the state should regulate private sex acts that do not harm anyone.
Then keep it where it's actually parallel, with people. Dragging animals into the mix smacks of the old let's compare blacks to monkeys business. Best left alone and if you can't make the case using law and people it's not much of one to begin with, is it?