Skylar
The 14th does Not Apply. All of the Gay Rights advocates are specifically using Race Decisions when applying this to the Case coming before the Supreme Court. Every Case they use is the cases of Racial Discrimination in State Laws banning Whites from marrying outside of Race to another gender.
"Holding/Analysis
Yes, the law is invalidated because it violates both the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the United States constitution. The court decision was unanimous. The court argued that the right to marriage is a fundamental right of humanity and cannot be denied whatsoever to anyone on the basis of race, especially on the basis of the married parties’ race. This freedom resides with the individual and is protected by the constitution and cannot be violated by state legislatures. The court held that there could not be any legitimate state interest in proffering the law; and the only reason for it existing in the first place was to promote white supremacy.
The court also wrote that laws discriminating on the basis of race were subject to the “strictest” possible scrutiny. The lowest level – “rational basis” – examination does not apply in this case, because the law strikes at the core of racial discrimination."
This above is the original decision in the Loving v. Virginia Case. Again this is the same ruling as above and is a case of Race discrimination. Which is the Primary reason the 14th Amendment was passed.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Lovings' convictions in a unanimous decision (dated June 12, 1967), dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race—and providing identical penalties to white and black violators—could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Justice Earl Warren's opinion for the unanimous court held that:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
The court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy:
There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.
Associate Justice Potter Stewart filed a brief concurring opinion. He reiterated his opinion from McLaughlin v. Florida that "it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor."
