More about marriage

Following the previous post about justifications for prohibiting same-sex marriage a couple of quotes from Loving v. Virginia (the case that finally ended bans on inter-racial marriage) are in order:

"Over the years, this court has consistently repudiated 'distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry' as being 'odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.' At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications...be subjected to the 'most rigid scrutiny', and if they are ever to be upheld they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate'

"To deny this fundamental freedom [marriage] 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 discriminations. 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."

I cannot think of a single plausible way to exclude discrimination based on sexual orientation from the above reasoning.