Marriage Quote by Mike Rounds

Calling marriage “sacred” is doing triple-duty here: it elevates a policy preference into a moral absolute, it recruits religious language without naming any denomination, and it frames dissent as not just political disagreement but cultural vandalism. Mike Rounds isn’t simply arguing for a definition; he’s claiming custodianship over an institution that supposedly predates and outranks the messy give-and-take of democratic compromise. Once you accept “sacred” as the premise, the rest becomes administrative: of course Senators must “protect” it, as if marriage were an endangered monument, not a living contract that has repeatedly been revised by law and social change.

The line “as many South Dakotans have done” is the velvet glove over a hard majoritarian claim. It suggests a groundswell, a shared common sense, a constituency whose authenticity is self-evident. That move narrows who counts as “South Dakotan” in the first place, implicitly casting same-sex couples and their allies as outside the real public. It’s populist ventriloquism: the speaker speaks as the people, and the people are defined as those who agree.

Context matters. This kind of rhetoric peaked during the battles over state constitutional amendments and the federal push for a marriage amendment in the 2000s, when “traditional marriage” functioned as a reliable wedge issue. The intent is coalition maintenance: signal to social conservatives, reassure moderates with the language of protection, and keep the debate on symbolism rather than on the concrete harms of exclusion.