June 13, 2011 9:18AM # Marriage and the Courts By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE In [today’s Britannica column](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/06/marriage-law-1967-2011/), I write about yesterday’s 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s *Loving* decision and its relevance to the current *Perry v. Schwarzenegger* (now actually *Perry v. Brown*) case. It includes videos from Cato’s recent forum, from the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and from the 1967 ABC News report on the Supreme Court decision. You really should watch that one. I also note some of the objections to the Perry case: > When it comes to the *Perry* v. *Schwarzenegger* case, there are legitimate federalist and democratic objections. One might say that marriage law has always been a matter for the states, and it should stay that way. Let the people of each state decide what marriage will be in their state. Leave the federal courts out of it. Federalism is an important basis for liberty, and that’s a strong argument. There’s also a discomfiting argument that a Supreme Court decision striking down bans on gay marriage is undemocratic, that it would be better to let the political process work through the issue. Some people, even [supporters](http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/states_dissolve_culture_wars/) of gay marriage, [warn](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128994525) that a court decision could be another Roe v. Wade, with decades of cultural war over an imposed decision. For a response, [read the column](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/06/marriage-law-1967-2011/). ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).