ABSTRACT
In July 2003, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum responded to the decriminalization of sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas by warning USA Today readers that the ruling would initiate a domino effect, with marriage the next great American institution annihilated by an activist Supreme Court. “Every civilization since the beginning of man has recognized the need for marriage,” Santorum claimed. “Furthermore, it’s just common sense that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”1 One year later, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that denying legal marriage to same-sex couples violated the state’s constitution,2 Governor Mitt Romney echoed Santorum while testifying at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on “preserving traditional marriage”: “Has America been wrong about marriage for 200-plus years? Were generations that spanned thousands of years from all the civilizations of the world wrong about marriage?”3
