Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
-------------------------------------
There is one and only one way that I can think of under this clause to ultimately prevent legally recognized "gay marriage" -- and you are not going to like it.
That is to remove "marriage" from government jurisdiction, so that it cannot decide one way or another what constitutes "a marriage".
Instead, we'd all have legal "domestic partnerships" , and leave the concept of "marriage" to priests, ministers and rabbis to interpret, individually, instead of "casting pearls (the concept of marriage) before swine (politicians). In a sense, this would be "only rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's" -- the legality of the issue, not the Sacramental nature of it.
I live in California where a bitter election battle was just fought over this very issue and it is being challenged in the courts. I don't expect the clause added to the State Constitution preventing gay marriage to hold, specifically because of the 14th Amendment. But if we had taken the concept of "marriage" out of their reach and placed it where it belonged -- with religious leaders -- to begin with, we wouldn't be having this problem.
I’ve been arguing for that very case for the last 3 years.
Government has no business dictating what is or is not marriage. Marriage is a sacrament from G-d.
Why we feel the need to put that holiness into the hands of the most unholy - politicians - I’ll never understand.