Will Gays Be Punished for Success?

Things have certainly improved for gays since I came out of the closet over 11 years ago.  If nothing else, in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas even in Virginia we no longer have to be arrested and charged with a felony for having sex between consenting adults in the privacy of our own homes.  But otherwise, little else has changed for gays in Virginia and many other homophobic states in terms of legal rights or recognition.  We can still be fired at will from our jobs, we can be discriminated against in housing, and Virginia recognizes our relationships with our household pets than out committed life partners.  And yet some - including Chief Justice John Roberts - have the outrageous fantasy world view that gays have been so successful and gained political influence to the extent that they don't need the Supreme Court to rule that gay marriage is a constitutional right under the U. S. Constitution which supposedly guarantees that all citizens have an equal right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  Maureen Dowd in her typical style takes such lunacy - dare we say bigotry? - to task.  Here are some column highlights:

GAYS might not win because they’ve already won?  That was the moronic oxymoron at the heart of the Supreme Court debate on same-sex marriage.

The justices offered no pearls on liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Justice Antonin Scalia didn’t even know how many states allowed gay marriage. Clarence Thomas looked distracted, whispering to clerks and tilting horizontally in his chair. 

Justice Anthony Kennedy had a single compassionate moment, mentioning the children whose gay parents were stuck in marital limbo. But for the most part, the human factor, how demeaning it feels to be shunted to a lower plane than your fellow citizens, was ignored.  Kennedy offered no lovely odes to fairness as he did in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, striking down a sodomy law, when people in the courtroom actually wept at his majority opinion, which stated that “the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  Brushing back originalists and troglodytes then, Kennedy said that “times can blind us to certain truths, and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress.”

On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts played Karl Rove, musing not about moral imperatives but political momentum.  “You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?” he asked Roberta Kaplan, the New York lawyer representing Edie Windsor  .  .  .  .  

Justice Roberts’s suggestion that gays are banishing a long, egregious history of blatant, disgusting, government-sponsored discrimination on their own is absurd. You could almost hear him thinking, “They’ve got ‘Glee,’ they’ve got Ellen, they’ve got Tammy Baldwin — what are they whining about?”  Can you imagine Chief Justice Earl Warren, a Republican, making a similar point about blacks during the 1967 Loving v. Virginia arguments? 

The court noted [in Loving] in its opinion that the political process had achieved significant progress around the country, with 14 states in 15 years repealing laws outlawing interracial marriages. Yet the justices struck down the law anyway because, as they said, “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.” (Paving the way for Clarence and Ginni Thomas to live happily ever after in Virginia.)

Congress has passed no federal protections for gays on employment, housing and education. In 29 states, it is perfectly legal to fire someone because of his or her sexual orientation. The F.B.I. says the only uptick in hate crimes involves attacks on gays.  

What the political world giveth, it can taketh away. The Supreme Court should know that civil rights are not supposed to be determined on the whims of the people. 

Well said.  Chief Justice Roberts needs to get his head out of his ass if he was serious in him statements.