Alito’s Draft Ruling Is a Warning to LGBT Americans

When I first came out of the closet, here in Virginia same sex relationships could result in a felony conviction and obviouly, there was no same sex marriage.  The Supreme Court rulings in Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell changed all that.  Nor were there any protections against anti-LGBT discrimination in the realm of employment or other aspects of life as I learned all too harshly when I was forced from a law firm for being gay.  Justice Alito's draft ruling overturning Roe V. Wade frighteningly suggests that those rulings may be the next to be found "wrongly decided" since they too rely on a constitutional right to privacy and personal autonomy and, therefore, can be wiped away with the stroke of five pens weilded by hubris-filled justices that seek to force a white Christofascust religious belief set on all Americans. Can it be long before LGBT Americans find themselves faced with the prospect of again being criminalized and stripped of legal recognition of theirmost important relationships?  If Alito and his fellow extremists on the Court have their way, it could only be a matter of time. Will Loving v. Virginia and Brown v. Board of Education be on the road to reversal as well?  A column in the Washington Post looks at the newly terrifying world that may soon be upon us.  Here are excerpts:

Until Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade was published Monday, I didn’t fully understand just how dependent my same-sex marriage is on a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Now I do. And I’m terrified.

The tremors of this political earthquake reached me the next day in Los Angeles during a conversation with Ian Mackey, an out gay Missouri state representative who went viral last month after an impassioned speech standing up to fellow lawmakers whose noxious legislation targets trans kids. Mackey pointed out that Roe provided the underpinning for pro-LGBTQ rulings including Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Without Roe, the foundation for Obergefell is gone — and the more than 568,000 same-sex marriages performed since then, including my own, could be invalidated.

I didn’t doubt Mackey’s warning. But after finally wading through Alito’s 98-page draft, my fear is off the charts.

In 1973′s Roe, the justices ruled that abortion restrictions were unconstitutional because they violated the 14th Amendment’s admonition that states not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” And 1992′s Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey tinkered with some aspects of Roe but reaffirmed the due process rights of women to seek an abortion.

The first of myriad red flags appears on Page 5. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito writes. “That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’” This country has a lot of rights not deeply rooted. For instance, the nation is 245 years old, but racial integration is just 57 years old. Marriage equality is nearly seven.

Another warning is where Alito rips the Roe ruling because “it held that the abortion right, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of a right to privacy, which is also not mentioned.” And Casey, he sneers, is grounded “solely on the theory that the right to obtain an abortion is part of the ‘liberty’ protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.” Theory?

Then Alito casts aspersions on the cases the court used in its Casey ruling to justify that liberty “theory.” Among them are Loving v. Virginia (legalized interracial marriage) and Griswold v. Connecticut (guaranteed access to contraception). He also hammers away at the “theory” by taking aim at post-Casey decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas (decriminalized consensual sex between adults) and Obergefell.

Alito makes an astonishing assertion: . . . . Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Alito must think we’re fools. . . . If Roe and Casey must be overturned because they are hopelessly flawed, then all other cases that rely on their arguments asserting privacy and personal liberty are endangered. The 6-to-3 conservative Supreme Court majority is packed with ideologues; how could it resist taking Alito’s radical thinking to its logical end?

This is what was concerning Mackey on Monday. He elaborated in a subsequent email:

If [Alito] prevails, and the Court in fact begins treating every individual right not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights as a policy dispute, we must presume it is only a matter of time before marriage equality, and the right to engage in an intimate same-sex relationship, is once again a policy dispute. Griswold, Loving, Roe, Lawrence, and Obergefell survive only together. One without the other is non-existent. The rights of the marginalized are bonded together in writing through these decisions to form a single thread. If one tears the entire fabric is undone.

Even if the final ruling in the next month or two isn’t as radical as the draft opinion, what Alito put forth is a clear warning to LGBTQ Americans that our rights could be stripped next.

LGBT American who fails to make sure they vote a straight Democrat ticket in EVERY election is a fool and as misguided as wealthy European Jews who thought the Nazis would not come for them.  Extremists like the right wing majority on the Supreme Court do not make exceptions to their extreme ideology.