Hmm? Traditional marriage is collectivist versus some differing notion of “individualism”? I don’t want to be confused on this point.
Not collectivist. Maybe communitarian or just traditionalist. Certainly not libertarian in the way that people are using the word lately.
From the article:
Hetrosexuals did that a long time ago. They forgot that marriage is not supposed to be based on romantic love. Historically, it's a contract between four entities. The man, the woman, G-d, and the State. Each party is supposed to have both rights and obligations to the other.
But we (hetros) made marriage about 'feelings' and romantic love. We chipped away at our obligations to the state and forgot that we have actual obligations to our partner. We decriminalized infidelity. We created no-fault divorce. We wanted all of the benefits, without all those messy obligations.
You can argue that none of that is true individualism -- that true individualism involves responsibilities as well as rights and that what's going on now involves people making bad decisions and expecting others to clean up the consequences. All of that would be true. But romance and the individual quest for happiness are what the article is criticizing and that is associated with at least one conception of individualism.
I haven't read through the court decision, but a lot of the court's talk of autonomy and fulfillment does have something to do with one way of understanding individualism, and it sounds like this article takes a very different view, one that's maybe more in line with the old idea of responsible individualism, but different from how many people think today.