Actually, it is a right

Amanda at Pandagon points out that one conservative argues against gay marriage thusly:

Can people who think anonymous sex isn’t cheating on their partner really be considered married? Booty-bumping? Come on, people, how many of you married people booty-bump with strangers with your spouse’s permission? Once again for the liberals (and Liberals): Marriage isn’t a right, it’s a privilege, and (like “alternate lifestyles”) a lifestyle decision. To be married is to keep yourself faithful in mind & body. Shouldn’t the homosexual community earn the privilege of marriage first, instead of us just handing it over? Let them prove to the rest of us that they can behave as married people should, before they are granted the opportunity to call themselves married?

The Supreme Court disagrees:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.