Marriage Quote by Randy Neugebauer

The sentence is doing three jobs at once: invoking democracy, narrowing a definition, and laundering a contested moral claim through procedural language. Neugebauer piles “people” on top of “people” until it starts to sound like a legal incantation: elected by the people, of that State, determined by the people. The repetition isn’t accidental. It’s a rhetorical seal meant to shut down the real argument - whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry - by reframing it as a question that’s already been settled by legitimate process.

The specific intent is defensive: to justify restricting marriage to heterosexual couples by appealing to federalism and majoritarian decision-making. “Forty-five States” works as a blunt instrument of consensus, implying that sheer volume equals correctness. It’s also a time stamp. This line comes from a moment when many states passed constitutional amendments defining marriage, often via ballot initiatives that rode culture-war turnout and were later upended by courts. Neugebauer’s framing anticipates that legal vulnerability. If courts are seen as overriding “the people,” then the courts become the antagonist, not the policy.

The subtext is a warning dressed up as civics: don’t let judges or Washington elites rewrite what communities have voted for. It also narrows “marriage” into a single authorized meaning, treating a social institution as if it’s a fixed dictionary entry rather than a changing legal status. The sentence’s careful, procedural tone is the point; it makes exclusion sound like governance.