“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as … classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the state’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”
-Chief Justice Earl Warren in Loving v. Virginia, 1967
