How To Read SCOTUS' Gay Marriage Opinion

Finally, on Friday, the Supreme Court announced that same-sex marriage would be legal in all 50 states, and that states would be required to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas all dissenting. You can read it here, including (in a strange move) the lengthy dissents from each of the four justices. But it doesn't matter because LOVE IS LOVE, Y'ALL.

Kennedy concluded his opinion with a perfect summation of what LGBT activists have been fighting to achieve for decades:

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.