Not a single person in the Congress or in the state legislatures who voted to ratify the 14th Amendment to the Constitution believed they were voting to require states to allow same sex “marriage.” Not a single person.
The amendment had one purpose; to guarantee to former slaves the same rights as enjoyed by white people.
How then can the 14th Amendment mean something today that it did not mean with it was adopted?
It can’t.
If the Supreme Court rules that it does, we will have lost our Republic (again) and this country will be a mere tyranny of judges who rule for life.
Because so many gays have gotten married in states where laws and constitutional amendments preventing SS marriage were overturned by black robed tyrants, I fear the SC may just rule that the ship has already sailed and side with them by default.
Let me say up front that I don't think gay marriage is an equal protection issue, and that the court should not rule to compel states to accept it. But this question about how can the 14th mean something the adopters never considered is worth answering.
It happens all the time that a law is applied to facts that weren't considered before. Especially in the case of something like the 14th, which encoded a very general concept into the Constitution, the rule set up by a law can be applied to many sets of facts. What the legislators thought about at the time is not what matters. What the text of the rule they established says is what matters. The only time intent is an issue is when the text isn't clear and may be read more than one way.
To simplify, if I'm the original drafters I may want to make a law to protect ex-slaves so I make one that says everyone must be treated equally. But once I make that law that's what it says. Everyone must be treated equally. Not just slaves, and not just about discrimination against blacks. If I wanted something more narrow then I need to write it more narrowly.