The 'founding fathers' of the American republic were religiously-oriented men - each one - down to their marrow. But then so was the age that produced them. The foundation of the American republic is so entirely bound up with religious and theological ideals that America can be thought of as a religious republic. It was designed in that way. That intention was part of the reasoning and the vision to establish it. To understand the foundational aspect of religion - obviously Christianity - at the base of Americanism see
Robert Bellah and his notion of
'American civil religion'.
The notion of 'separation of church and state' and certainly the
Establishment Clause, have to do, originally, with a fear that a Federal authority would establish some form of national church, and thus impose a specific creed or branch of Christianity and religion on the States. But it would be absurd and counter-factual to make a supposition (unless of course one were under the spell of recent political correct notions) that the Founders desired a Republic free of religion, of religious values, and of specifically Christian religion and values. It would amount to a revisionist statement and it would be, therefor, a form of lie.
It would be fair to say though that the Christian belief of the Founders was not a monolith, and that each of them, expressing the various levels of revolution in thinking occurring, began to conceive of religiousness in different, perhaps non-conventional is the right word, ways Jefferson selected from the NT a group of ideas and ideals that he distinguished from the OT and more Jewish (unenlightened, to him) matrix out of which Christianity rose. There is much that can be said of the religiousness, and the religious conception (and the metaphysical conceptions) of the Founding generation yet it would be thoroughly false to say they were not religious, were not interested in supporting and inculcating religious and specifically Christian ideals, or that they desired a Republic free of religious practice. This is a recent spin, and serves modernist purposes, and especially those with origins in Marxian ideology which, quite naturally, attack foundations in order to impose new foundational tenets.
It would - obviously! - have been inconceivable to a late 18th Century mind to think on or propose a 'marriage' between two men or two women. I think it safe to say that it would fall in the realm of 'unthinkable thought'. To that mind, the only conceivable union was the fruitful union of a man and a woman. This is no-brain material. It does not require much pondering.
But lately, and for reasons that can be traced, and ideology that can be defined, presented, explained (and also critiqued), it has become 'necessary' to de-define male-female union as the sole conceivable union. How this came about, and the evolution in ideas that allows/produces it, is conversable, but it involves contentious definitions, polemics based in those definitions, and a foray into 'the culture wars'.
In American politics, the result of a Federal 'putsch' and the ascendency of the Federal power resulting from the American Civil War has ensconced both 'conservative' trends and also more 'radical' trends as strange bedfellows. To understand judicial radicalism, though, requires backtracking through these former events. And of course it all requires an examination of the influence of 'radical liberalism' on and in the fabric of the modern American republic.
The thinking tendencies of a man such as Thomas Paine - I would argue - and possibly too Emerson and Whitman (and others) - would I think eventually incline toward the notion that a marriage is about 'love' and any person can choose to define who they 'love'. There are indeed 'seeds of radicalism' in the thinking of the Founders and that generation of intellects. However, I think it is a good idea to remember that the American Republic was established on classically conservative notions, as compared to the French Republic and it revolution which was far more radical in conception and intention.
