U.S. Sen. John Cornyn – Photo: C-SPAN. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) sought to re-litigate the fight over whether same-sex couples have the right to marry, grilling Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson over the issue during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. For nearly 28 minutes of his allotted half-hour, Cornyn peppered Jackson — the first Black woman to be nominated for a seat on the high court — with questions about same-sex marriage and the proper role of the judiciary, opining that the Supreme Court created a new right that is not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution when it declared 32 states’ bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision . Noting that a right to marriage is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, Cornyn asked Jackson whether she agreed with the proposition that marriage is a religious institution as well as a governmental institution, to which Jackson responded that marriages area often performed in religious institutions. Cornyn pressed her, asking if many major religions embrace a traditional definition of marriage, a fact that Jackson affirmed. “Do you you see that when the Supreme Court makes a dramatic pronouncement about the invalidity of state […]
