I mean, lower courts don't mean a lot in the grand scheme of things, for better or worse. It seems clear that the lower courts are trying to legislate from the bench in service of a moral good. The constitution is extremely unambiguous about this:

  第二十四条

  婚姻は、両性の合意のみに基いて成立し、夫婦が同等の権利を有することを基本として、相互の協力により、維持されなければならない。

With "両性" unambiguously meaning "both sexes" and "夫婦" unambiguously meaning "husband and wife".

▲ mwigdahl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks, I did not go to the source document here so your quote and translation is appreciated!

▲ qmarchi 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You could play with that though since "both sexes" could be perceived as "both individuals that have a sex" and "husband and wife" don't have any technical meaning.

I'm not a lawyer, but they're working on it.

	▲	naniwaduni 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There is value in maintaining the fiction that words mean things.
	▲	numpad0 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's already a play on 両姓(both surnames), which could have meant that parents could constitutionally block marriages. Not that it matters, though. People are frankly more concerned about tax frauds and crime record laundering abusing same-sex marriages than imagined traditional family values.