Tellie and Marion and the Supremes

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When I read the news that the Supreme Court had declined to review various gay-marriage cases, in effect making gay marriage legal in a number of additional states, my thoughts turned to my great aunt Tellie and her friend Marion. These two women were a part of my life as far back as I can remember. "Old maid" school teachers in a small town in Alabama, they shared a house and a life.

When they came to visit my grandparents, they shared a bed. 

They taught me how to make fudge and penuche and they showed me how to make pineneedle baskets.  Their jams and preserves took prizes at the county fair as did their needlework. They loved cross stitch, usually sitting side by side on a sofa to work on the same tablecloth or baby quilt.

They lived up into their nineties. And when Tellie developed Alzheimer's and had to be put in a facility many miles from their home, Marion made the hour long drive every day to be with her. If a couple like that can be denied marriage, while people like Newt Gingrich (serial adulterer,) Cher (who married Gregg Allman a week after divorcing Sonny Bono only to file for divorce from Allman nine days later,) and all those other folks you read about while in the checkout line at the grocery are free to marry and re-marry, I really have to wonder how people like Ted Cruz can go on about the 'sanctity of marriage.' Cruz accused the Supreme Court of undermining "the constitutional  authority of each state to define marriage consistent with the values of its citizens." What if those citizens don't approve of interracial marriages? What if they approve of polygamy?  Seems like deja vu all over again. . .  
And for those who argue that the mere existence of gay marriage threatens traditional marriage, I can't do better than quote from a Facebook post by my older, traditionally married son, commenting on a wail from a defender of traditional marriage that the Supreme Court had decided to ' watch marriage burn to ashes... '  "Speaking as someone who fully expects his marriage to be intact in another five, ten, twenty, however-many years, this reads so much like a lack of personal confidence. Maybe your own marriage is held together with chewing gum and brittle packing tape, but there's no need to project."