Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the Supreme Court’s 2015 opinion declaring a right to same-sex marriage, recalled on Wednesday one of the poignant realities that influenced him – and why he believes the decision would never be overturned.

“A large part of the reasoning in the opinion, and the background of the opinion, was that I had not known how many children were adopted by parents” who were gay or lesbian, Kennedy said during an interview with CNN in his chambers. “At first, I thought there were 75,000 children or so. It’s in the hundreds of thousands.”

The court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was rooted in Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of liberty and equal protection of the law. Yet Kennedy, who retired in 2018, told CNN his concern for adopted children “was a cru

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