There is finally a circuit split on the same-sex marriage issue. The Sixth Circuit today upheld gay marriage bans in Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky. Here's the opinion. The split greatly increases the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up this issue. The Court had previously declined to grant cert on the issue, but at that point no circuit split existed.
Respected conservative Judge Sutton wrote the majority opinion (the court split 2-1). The opinion begins with this paragraph:
"This is a case about change—and how best to handle it under the United States Constitution. From the vantage point of 2014, it would now seem, the question is not whether American law will allow gay couples to marry; it is when and how that will happen. That would not have seemed likely as recently as a dozen years ago. For better, for worse, or for more of the same, marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world."
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