Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall wrote the 4 to 3 majority opinion, which acknowledged that it was finding in the words of John Adams a meaning that he could hardly have foreseen when he wrote the Massachusetts Constitution 223 years ago. The long-standing definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman "deprives individuals of access to an institution of fundamental legal, personal, and social significance . . . because of a single trait," namely their sexual orientation, Marshall wrote.