Idaho State Lawmakers Take Aim at Marriage Equality

Republican state representatives in Idaho approved a resolution to call on the Supreme Court to roll back national equal marriage rights – but the measure did not have unanimous support, with 15 GOP state lawmakers voting against the resolution along with the chamber's nine Democratic members.

Still, a majority of Republicans threw their support behind the measure, the Idaho Statesman reported, with the resolution sailing through the chamber on a 46-24 vote.

The resolution purports to ask the Court to return "the power to regulate marriage... to the states," The New York Times detailed, but the measure was being "pushed" by a Massachusetts-based national organization, the Statesman noted.

"Pushed by an anti-LGBTQ+ group called MassResistance, the resolution is sponsored by Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, who argued her proposal was about state sovereignty," the Statesman said.

MassResistance has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its work against marriage equality and its rhetoric suggesting that LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles who "lure" children into somehow becoming queer through anti-suicide efforts.

The language of the Idaho measure, however, had less to do with state's rights than a partisan perspective on the nature of marriage and the question of who deserves to participate in it.

"The resolution asks the nation's highest court to 'restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman,'" the Statesman relayed.

The resolution was instantly contentious, news reports said.

The Times quoted the head of the Idaho chapter of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, who is married to another woman, asking, "What is the purpose of this exercise?"

Suggesting an answer to her own question, DelliCarpini-Tolman added: "It really feels like a value statement being sent to the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Idaho that they are not welcome.''

MassResistance, led by Brian Camenker, has worked against marriage equality since the mid-1990s, well before Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to grant equal marriage rights to its citizens, with same-sex legal marriages commencing in the state in 2004.

11 years later, as state after state followed Massachusetts' lead and approved marriage equality, the Supreme Court found that marriage equality is a Constitutional right with its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

The ruling was closely divided, with four of the Court's nine justices dissenting. Two of those justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have continued to invite a revisitation of the issue by the Court, and with three Trump appointees having shifted the balance of the bench toward the hard right, any such reconsideration might well see the Court snatch marriage rights away from millions of Americans in committed same-sex relationships.

That has been the scenario envisioned by watchdogs since the Court disregarded settled law and undid a half-century of American law by rescinding reproductive freedoms in 2021 and striking down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Court ruling that found a Constitutional right for a woman to end her pregnancy.

A direct result of that repeal of reproductive freedoms was the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, which would act as a backstop on a Supreme Court curtailment of marriage equality. Still, the Respect for Marriage Act will not completely protect the nation's same-sex families.

"The resolution would still need approval by the full House and the Idaho Senate before any request could be sent to the Supreme Court," The Times noted. That seems likely, however: "Both chambers in Idaho are controlled by Republicans," The Times added.

"At the hearing in Idaho, the sponsor of the measure, Representative Heather Scott, a Republican, said it was important to make a statement about states' rights," The Times reported.

"If we start down this road where the federal government or the judiciary decides that they're going to create rights for us, then they can take rights away," Scott declared.

That would seem to be exactly what Idaho lawmakers are seeking, given the aim of the resolution.

The question remains what effect, if any, the resolution will have. Legal scholar Tobias Wolff of the University of Pennsylvania told The Times that the resolution is "just theater" that is unlikely to lead to any judicial action, saying, "the Supreme Court will no more respond to a letter from the Idaho Legislature than they would a letter from me.''