Mus­lims who were offend­ed by the gath­er­ing at which car­toon­ists sketched car­i­ca­tures of the Prophet Muham­mad may also take offense next month when the Supreme Court sketch­es its car­i­ca­ture of marriage.

But Mus­lims may warm to the Court’s expect­ed rul­ing in favor of same-sex mar­riage once they pon­der the poten­tial ramifications.

It is worth not­ing that though there are mil­lions of Islam­ic faith­ful in the U.S., only two took the “Draw the Prophet” con­vo­ca­tion as an incite­ment to vio­lence.  Most of the rest chose more appro­pri­ate out­lets for their dis­ap­proval, as they will when the Court issues its deci­sion in Oberge­fell v. Hodges.

Oberge­fell turns on whether the Four­teenth Amend­ment com­pels states to rec­og­nize the legal valid­i­ty of same-sex mar­riages.  The Court is expect­ed to hold that it does, a rather remark­able rever­sal in a remark­ably short peri­od of time.

Just two years ago, the Court wrote that states alone had author­i­ty to define and reg­u­late mar­riage, includ­ing lim­it­ing it to het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples (U.S. v. Wind­sor, slip opin­ion at pages 14, 17 and 18).  In strik­ing down a pro­vi­sion of the Defense of Mar­riage Act, the Court held that states have pri­ma­cy in defin­ing mar­riage and that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment had to assume a sub­servient role, accept­ing the valid­i­ty of any mar­riage licensed by any state.  Next month, it is expect­ed to hold that the fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion requires every state to accept the valid­i­ty of same-sex mar­riages, turn­ing the pri­ma­cy of state law artic­u­lat­ed in Wind­sor on its head.

A brief filed by one of the cou­ples urg­ing this result assert­ed that mar­riage is “a foun­da­tion­al means in our soci­ety of seek­ing per­son­al ful­fill­ment and acquir­ing com­mu­ni­ty esteem.”  Mar­riage, they argue, exists to make me feel good about myself and to com­pel the gov­ern­ment to authen­ti­cate my feelings.

Mar­riage did­n’t used to be viewed as a form of self-expres­sion.  It was under­stood, not as the enlarge­ment of rights, so much as their relin­quish­ment.  Tra­di­tion­al vows were pledges of self-denial, to place the good of anoth­er above one’s own even – espe­cial­ly – when cir­cum­stances sour.  The government’s inter­est in rec­og­niz­ing mar­riage has not been to val­i­date and affirm love and emo­tion, but to pro­tect the well-being of chil­dren who are the prod­uct of pro­cre­ative union.

The Court appears head­ed toward pro­claim­ing what Jus­tice Brey­er dur­ing oral argu­ments termed a fun­da­men­tal “right to be mar­ried,” an indi­vid­ual pre­rog­a­tive whose exer­cise states are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly oblig­ed to recognize.

In so doing, the Court will be accu­rate­ly reflect­ing, not only pop­u­lar atti­tudes toward mar­riage but toward life more gen­er­al­ly.  Self-absorp­tion, once con­sid­ered a vice, is com­ing to be viewed as life’s high­est pur­pose, the goal of the unend­ing pur­suit of gratification.

That is now our pre­vail­ing cul­tur­al out­look, as evi­denced in a thou­sand ways, includ­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of child­bear­ing from mar­riage. Two chil­dren in five are born to unmar­ried women, one indi­ca­tion of how the needs of chil­dren take a back seat to the lifestyle choic­es of adults. Though not per­fect­ly cor­re­lat­ed – there are many car­ing and devot­ed sin­gle par­ents – the cumu­la­tive impact of so many father­less fam­i­lies evi­dences itself in social dis­lo­ca­tions of every sort.

Our cul­ture has nonethe­less increas­ing­ly embraced an unyield­ing devo­tion to the cult of the self, a devo­tion that can be expressed in anom­alous ways.  We are told that het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty are bio­log­i­cal­ly deter­mined but that gen­der is not.  At least that appears to be the mes­sage of Bruce Jen­ner, the real­i­ty show celebri­ty who is pay­ing doc­tors a good deal of mon­ey to change him from an old man into an old woman, and in the process win him at least a few more years of the pub­lic atten­tion he craves.

Jenner’s sur­gi­cal and hor­mon­al trans­for­ma­tion is con­ceived as an act of self-actu­al­iza­tion, lib­er­at­ing his inner being from bio­log­i­cal shack­les.  The Court’s rul­ing, mean­while, is seen as the tri­umph of biol­o­gy, as gay and les­bian peo­ple win gov­ern­ment approval for actu­al­iz­ing what they regard as their genet­ic destiny.

Amer­i­can Mus­lims, like oth­er peo­ple with reli­gious con­vic­tions or even tra­di­tion­al sec­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ties, no doubt find much of this bewil­der­ing.  Yet adher­ents to Islam may ulti­mate­ly derive some ben­e­fit from the Court’s ruling.

The lawyer argu­ing the same-sex mar­riage case before the Supreme Court fum­bled the ques­tion of whether states were con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to sanc­tion polyg­a­mous mar­riages.  She argued that states could refuse to grant licens­es to any­one but cou­ples because polyg­a­mous divorce would cause “lots of fam­i­ly dis­rup­tion issues,” cit­ing vis­i­ta­tion rights as an exam­ple.  Divorce almost invari­ably caus­es dis­rup­tion, but that does not autho­rize a state to deny some­one’s “right to mar­ry.”  If the Court holds that peo­ple have a right to the “per­son­al ful­fill­ment” and “com­mu­ni­ty esteem” con­ferred by mar­riage, then it needs a far more com­pelling rea­son than “fam­i­ly dis­rup­tion” to lim­it mar­riage to two peo­ple at a time. Gov­ern­ment can’t impose a quo­ta on love.

Accord­ing to Gallup, 3.6 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion are gay or les­bian, which makes them rather a tiny minor­i­ty.  At one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, Mus­lims are even less numer­ous than gays and arguably more reliant on the courts to vin­di­cate their rights.

The Prophet Muham­mad had sev­er­al wives. Koran­ic schol­ars teach that a man is per­mit­ted up to four of them.  If a group of Mus­lims were to assert a Four­teenth Amend­ment right to mar­ry in con­junc­tion with a First Amend­ment right to freely exer­cise their reli­gion, the Oberge­fell court would be hard-pressed to uphold a state’s refusal to issue them a mar­riage license.

Thus could a Supreme Court rul­ing both offend Mus­lims and lead to a sub­se­quent require­ment that gov­ern­ment legit­imize polyg­a­mous mar­i­tal arrangements.