Rubio: ‘No federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage’

Many Republican candidates have been dancing around this issue while some have tried to avoid it entirely. Marco Rubio was put on the spot recently and stated that, in his opinion, there is nothing in the United States Constitution which guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Rubio was asked in the context of the upcoming Supreme Court case which may decide the matter and either leave the issue to the states, or legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

Report from The Daily Caller:

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The Brody File,” Republican Florida senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio said that it was “ridiculous and absurd” to believe there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

HOST DAVID BRODY: Marriage in the Supreme Court — a big case coming this week to be argued. Where are you on this whole idea of a constitutional right that many people think…”

RUBIO: It doesn’t exist.

BRODY: It doesn’t exist?

RUBIO: There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

BRODY: That’s what they’re going to argue.

RUBIO: And there isn’t such a right. You would have to really have a ridiculous and absurd reading of the U.S. Constitution to reach the conclusion that people have a right to marry someone of the same sex. There is no such constitutional right. Can a state decide to change their laws? Yes, but only through the political process, not through the court system.

And that’s what’s happening now. The advocates of same-sex marriage refuse to go through the legislatures, because they can’t win that debate. They don’t want a debate in society; they want courts to impose it on people. And they’re not even satisfied with that. They’ve now gone further; they want to stigmatize, they want to ostracize anyone who disagrees with them as haters. It’s very simple.

This is not a policy against anyone. This is what I believe — as do a significant percentage of Americans — that the institution of marriage, an institution that existed before government, that existed before laws, that that institution should remain in our laws recognized as the union of one man and one woman.

This is a fairly bold stance to take when the winds seem to be shifting hard in the other direction. Rubio will need to court the evangelical vote to become viable in Iowa and he can’t risk being totally undercut by Cruz or Huckabee. One way to do that is to equivocally come out in opposition to the yet-to-be-decided Supreme Court decision that, according to some observers, has a good chance of legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states.