Case 2:13-cv-00395-AWA-LRL Document 135 Filed 02/13/14 Page 22 of 41 PageID# 1064
sustaining emotional bond." Kitchen, 2013 WL 6697874 at *16. "This right is deeply rooted in the nation's history and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty because it protects an individual's ability to make deeply personal choices about love and family free from government interference." Id.
Virginia's Marriage Laws impose a condition on this exercise. These laws limit the fundamental right to marry to only those Virginia citizens willing to choose a member of the opposite gender for a spouse. These laws interject profound government interference into one of the most personal choices a person makes.
Such interference compels careful judicial
examination:
Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Our cases recognize the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. Our
precedents have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter. These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and ofthe mystery ofhuman life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were theyformed under compulsion of the State.
Casey, 505 U.S. at 851 (1992) (second emphasis added) (quoting Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453 (1972); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1994)) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 620 (1984) (our federal
Constitution "undoubtedly imposes constraints on the State's power to control the selection of one's spouse").
Gay and lesbian individuals share the same capacity as heterosexual individuals to form,
preserve and celebrate loving, intimate and lasting relationships. Such relationships are created
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