Did Four Dissenting Justices In Gay Marriage Case Just Suggest Treason?

The extremism of the Republican Party and the Christofascists in the party's base increasingly sound like pro-slavery zealots from a century and a half ago who used "states rights" arguments to justify southern states' laws allowing the ownership of other humans - not that many of them even deemed blacks fully human.  Frighteningly, we saw some of the same rhetoric in the dissenting opinions of four Supreme Court justices and one has to wonder who in the deranged far right might take such statements as justification for what is in effect treason.  I have long thought that Scalia and Thomas need to be removed from the Court, and such dissenting opinions only add fuel to that view. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at  these dissents.  Here are highlights:

In controversial cases, is the role of jurist to inflame controversy, or quell it?  In Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case which found race-based marriage bans unconstitutional, Chief Justice Earl Warren built a 9-0 consensus—just as he’d done years earlier in Brown vs. Board of Education. He knew that a country divided by race ought to be united, if possible, by a Supreme Court mindful of fundamental values—even if the Court was, as the constitution requires, overturning the will of the majority.


The four dissents in the landmark case on same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges, one by each of the conservative justices on today’s Supreme Court, take a very different view. With invective and hyperbole, they pour fuel on the fire of the controversy over same-sex marriage. Rather than merely state their views and disagreements, they use heated language to accuse the five-person majority of imperialism, a “putsch,” and worse.


Thus, the unprecedented calls of elected officials for open revolt against the Supreme Court—a shocking display of treason—are now accompanied by calls from within the Court itself that Obergefell is illegitimate, and the Supreme Court itself no longer worthy of full respect.


Ironically, in alleging a new low for the Court, these four justices have brought one into being. Justice Scalia has, as usual, grabbed the spotlight with juvenile taunting usually reserved for the playground. But in fact, all four opinions are shocking.
Why not just tell the Religious Right to buy pitchforks and blowtorches? Chief Justice Roberts’ ironic opinion is immoderate in alleging immoderacy, extreme in alleging extremism.


Justice Scalia came next. And he begins thus: “I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.”


It seems inevitable that rhetoric like this will stir the next Confederate flag-waving zealot to an act of, if not domestic terrorism, at least outrageous revolt. How could it be otherwise? And yet this, too, was only the first line.
Throughout Justice Scalia’s hysterical writing in LGBT-related cases, he has doggedly maintained that their subjects are merely “homosexual conduct” and “homosexual sodomy.” That there are, in fact, gay and lesbian people is not part of Justice Scalia’s worldview, as he has shown time and time again. There is only homosexual conduct.

What Justice Scalia is saying here is that if it was “universal and uncontroversial” in 1868, it’s obviously okay now. That principle, of course, would allow states to ban interracial marriages, including that of Justice Thomas. It would allow states to bring back the doctrine that a woman surrenders all her rights to her husband upon marriage. It is shocking. . . . [and ] places Justice Scalia in a bizarre twilight-zone of 19th century values.

Were the targets of such acts only gays and lesbians, it would be bad enough.  But these four dissents have encouraged disrespect of the Supreme Court itself.  Agree or disagree with the Court’s method of interpreting the Constitution, they are acts of vandalism against one of the foundations of our democracy.

These disturbing dissenting opinions underscore the urgency of making sure a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2016.  God help all of us if a Republican wins and more treasonous individuals like Scalia are appointed to the Court. 

Why Taking Down the Confederate Falg is Important to LGBT's

Some might question why the current debates and arguments over the flying of of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and elsewhere has any bearing on LGBT rights.  But it doesn't take much examination to discern that those who support the state sponsored display of the Confederate flag are (i) largely one and the same people who supports same sex marriage bans and opposition to LGBT rights, and (ii) using the same arguments of "tradition" and state rights to justify hate and discrimination and the undermining of the U.S. Constitution.    Scratch the surface of the leadership of Family Research Council, The Family Foundation here in Virginia, and many other "family values" and "Christian" political action groups and you quickly find former segregationists and white supremacists.  A post in Huffington Post makes this case.  Here are highlights:

The Civil War wasn't about slavery. That's what I was told by teachers, family, friends, churchgoers and casual motorists at gas stations throughout my childhood in rural Alabama. Black and white had nothing to do with it, they said. States' rights, they would all echo. States' rights, yes, now that was the real reason--usually punctuating that last bit by spitting out a wad of chewing tobacco.

When you are white in the South, what you learn about the Confederate flag--which gets slapped on everything from pickup trucks to cakes to state houses--is that it is a flag of honorable defense against a tyrannical invader. It is meant to invoke a feeling of legacy for our ancestors who died in some great struggle for their definition of liberty.

[T]he survival of states' rights rhetoric in today's contemporary political landscape. During the oral arguments of Obergefell v. Hodges, both the counsellors and justices seemed as easily distracted as mayflies--hopping from one sour line of questioning to the next. However, one telling quote did stand out, from U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.:

"You may have many states, perhaps most states, in which gay couples can live with equal dignity and status," he said, "but you will have a minority of states in which gay couples will be relegated to demeaning, second-class status, and I don't know why we would want to repeat that history."

Those states that believe in enforcing marriage as a procreation-centered union and that assert their right to deny recognition to those who marry outside their lines are ever so slightly retracing the same lines that divided this country between free and slave states more than a hundred years ago--which took the country's deadliest war in its history to erase. 

White LGBTs can never fully know the painful past the Confederate flag holds for our brothers and sisters of color. However, we do know how the rhetoric it represents threatens our future. We are one country, with one flag, and we live by one promise: liberty and justice for all. The call to take down the flag is our call, too. Not just as supporters of the black community, but as members of our own community. A handful of states say they have the right to dictate our lives, our families and our happiness because they still believe in the awful patchwork of states' rights arguments that nearly brought our nation to the brink. Taking down that tattered flag is a symbol that LGBTs stand with the black community, and as importantly, stand for themselves as citizens of this Union.

The GOP's Alabama Problem

The turmoil roiling in Alabama as some state court judges are ignoring federal court rulings allowing same sex marriages to proceed is also setting up a problem for the GOP.  The recalcitrant judges are singing the same "states rights" song that the GOP has made its national anthem of late whenever its knuckle dragging, spittle flecked base seeks to torpedo federal programs or wants majority rule to determine the rights of gays, blacks, and anyone else the cretins and Christofascists deem as "other."  Now, the GOP may be about to see the mindset it helped foment bite it right in the ass.  A piece in Politico looks ate the looming problem that lunatics like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum try to fan the flames into a conflagration.  Here are article excerpts:

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defiance of a federal court order on gay marriage is just the latest in a long line of bitter states’ rights fights on issues from school integration to the Confederate battle flag – and the latest potentially embarrassing political sideshow for the 2016 field of GOP presidential hopefuls.

In the end, some veteran Republican strategists suggest, Moore’s order barring county probate judges from issuing gay marriage licenses may serve mainly to harden the entrenched positions of supporters and opponents of a legal issue on which public opinion has been shifting with lightning speed, and which the Supreme Court seems likely to resolve by this summer.

Moore’s decision, however, increases the chances that Republican presidential candidates will be forced to discuss the issue — in the racially freighted framework of states’ rights, no less — before extremely conservative voters in the heat of a primary campaign.

“It’s really the same arguments that the Civil War pivoted on, from nullification to states’ rights and all this stuff,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic strategist and native South Carolinian with a vivid appreciation for his region’s folkways and resistance to change.

Almost 52 years ago, Alabama’s segregationist Democratic governor, George Wallace, drew worldwide publicity for his theatrical stand in the “schoolhouse door” against integration of the University of Alabama. But he knew his was a losing cause. John Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and that was that.

More issued his order Sunday night, in defiance of a federal court ruling last month that Alabama’s statutory and constitutional bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional. The state is appealing that decision, but on Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to extend a delay in its enforcement, and officials in Alabama’s more cosmopolitan quarters began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

The issue flies straight in the face of efforts by Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus to broaden the GOP’s appeal, if only because it also flies straight in the face of the most conservative elements of the party’s base. As Huckabee recently put it, asking some conservative Christians to accept gay marriage is akin to asking Jews to serve “bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.”

“There is a feeling of ‘Here we go again,’’’ consultant Carrick said. “Roy Moore’s trying to turn back the clock, which is his specialty. I don’t know what the party’s going to do about these guys. As hard as Reince Priebus tries to get the clown car out of the Republican parade, there’s always somebody who comes in in another one.”

The true solution for the GOP?  Kick the Christofascists out and send them into the political wilderness.  They need to become outcasts not given the time of day in polite society or in national political parties.