In 1868 there were British subjects from Ireland who were not naturalized citizens of any US state who were living and working in the USA. They had children in the USA and those children were considered citizens of the USA.
Such children were functionally the "anchor babies" of the 1870s.
We can try to deport the baby, in which case we prove it’s “subject to our jurisdiction” and therefore it immediately becomes a citizen which can’t be deported. We can deport the parents and leave the baby here, but by leaving it here we take responsibility for it and again, that means it’s “subject to our jurisdiction” and it becomes a citizen. Or finally, we can just look the other way and allow the baby and its parents to stay here unofficially.
Then there is the fourth and most rational option: deport the parents and allow them to take their citizen child with them to their home country.
In my state of Tennessee, we amended our state constitution last year to limit marriage to one man and one woman.
Not analogous.
To repeat, there were plenty of people in the USA in 1868 who were citizens, although they were the children of citizens of foreign nations who were not naturalized US citizens at the time of their birth.
In 1868 sodomy was illegal and therefore so was the bizarre notion of a homosexual "marriage."
You do realize that those Irish were not here illegally, don’t you? There was no real federal immigration law prior to 1882. There had been an anti-Chinese immigrant bill in 1875, but there was no general policy of limiting who could enter until the broad federal immigration law in 1882.
The same-sex “marriage” issue is perfectly analogous and you’ve made it even more so by introducing sodomy law. You’re correct that sodomy was illegal in 1868. However, it’s now been declared to be a fundamental right by deliberate misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. Until that misinterpretation, it was a matter for the legislative branch. That’s also true of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The legislative branch determines the scope of what constitutes
such citizenship by their application of jurisdiction, which is different than location:
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