The Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses Gay couples suffered consequences. She wasn't happy with said consequences and may religious people were rooting for her to win her case for whatever it is that she wants as reparations.

But today, her case, which was refused a hearing by the SCOTUS, has come to an end.

BUT...!!

While agreeing that the refusal to hear the case was proper, two Justices, Thomas and Alito, took the opportunity to critique the MANNER in which the case giving all Americans the right to marry, regardless of their sex, was handled. (This was the case whose favorable decision created the problems for the County Clerk. The case said Gays could marry and she said her religion prohibited her from giving Gays the license they needed.)

From what I glean from the current analysis is that Alito & Thomas believe that Religion was smacked in the nose and that the resultant bloody nose, both hurtful and embarrassing, runs counter to the American Experience.


"Writing for himself and Alito, Thomas said that the court's decision 'enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.'

and then later:

"By choosing to endorse 'a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix,' they said. 'Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty.'"

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/920416357/justices-thomas-alito-blast-supreme-court-decision-on-gay-marriage-rights


I find myself quibbling with their idea that 'Religion' has rights and/or privileges given to it by the Constitution, which Rights to be Bigots are then further protected by the First Amendment.

How does one protect one set of Rights from another Set of Rights? Isn't it obvious that both Believers and non-Believers need room to grow?

And isn't it almost a truism that non-Believers are pretty blase regarding what Believers want to do on Sundays? And isn't it also pretty much a truism that with regard to commerce, and the earning/getting of money, Anything Goes?

How many innocent Christian Fanatics were brutally married to a member of their same-sex without their consent? Is that the protection the two Justices think is missing?

So much for stare decisis. . .

No, they apparently think they're clear on continuing to sustain Obergefell v. Hodges; they just want religious fanatics to have the same Rights that Gay fanatics have ... or something like that...


ETA: Okay, okay, okay, okay!!! Maybe they just want some level of certainty, back by law, that the Gays will not start trying to convert heterosexuals!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2020 06:49PM by elderolddog.

It would be difficult to state more clearly that Thomas and other SCOTUS right-wingers want to overturn the decisions supporting gay rights when an appropriate case comes their way. But of course if they can jettison established law in this instance they can do so in other instances as well.

So much for judicial conservatism, the notion that the courts should adhere to precedent. We are on the verge of unmoored judicial activism.

Have you boofed yet?

It doesn't make religious adherents bigots, it makes them unwilling to follow the law for those who believe differently than they do.

Your last line says it all, EOD.

In the end the so-called religious rights is the right to discriminate how where and when they want.

It shouldn't be that way but it is. The right to personal autonomy going back to the late 1960s SCOTUS decisions is now evaporating as individual independence gives way to the imposition of one group's preferences on everybody else.

The concept of majority rule has a huge glaring flaw. Makes the idea of having your own planet quite alluring.

Democracy is three wolves and two sheep deciding what's for dinner. Alternatively, it is Juan Peron or Vladimir Lenin saying "hey, we had a vote and I won. There will never be a need for another vote."

What differentiates an enduring democracy from Peronism is constitutional limits on the power of the majority. There must be rights (listen up, azsteve) inherent in the individual and upon which the government may not infringe. There must be checks and balances, including a functional judiciary that does not itself serve as a rubber stamp for the majority.

But when the "majority" takes power and then breaks down the constitutional system and imposes judges with no commitment to judicial conservatism, meaning respect for the constitution and its historical interpretation, the next thing you have is an aging prostitute singing "Don't Cry for me, Argentina."

I really don't care. Do U?

Very well said LW.
"But when the "majority" takes power and then breaks down the constitutional system and imposes judges with no commitment to judicial conservatism, meaning respect for the constitution and its historical interpretation, the next thing you have is an aging prostitute singing "Don't Cry for me, Argentina."

This leads me to the question, wouldn't that be the description of every supreme court judge who sided with the Left? Especially RBG who spent much of her career fighting for feminist issues, and abortions etc. The majority of the nation wants women to have many rights but I don't think the conservative constitution wanted women to have rights.

Interesting things to think about.

The question, macaRomney, is whether the rulings align with the constitution and the SCOTUS precedents. That's a fairly easy standard to apply and, applying it, RBG is not widely viewed as someone who strayed from a judicially conservative position.

Recall that most of her gender rights decisions were cases in favor of the MALES suffering discrimination. That was the strategy that she and her mentor, Gerald Gunther, decided upon. The justices couldn't empathize with women wanting equal rights but they could understand why it was unfair for a man to lose his share of his deceased wife's benefits because he was a man.

So turning around now and saying she bent the rules for women is not a terribly compelling argument.

To me, our country's finest moments were when the Supreme Court stood up for the powerless, even when the majority of people were not in favor. Who will be our Thurgood Marshall, our Ruth Bader Ginsberg? There may be some fine jurists on the bench, but are there real leaders, that is the question.

I am a judicial conservative: I believe justices should adhere to the law and the existing precedents. They aren't legislators.

But when a series of rights are established through the constitution but ignored, like the post-Civil War amendments that were supposed to protect African Americans, establishing means to enforce those rights is not judicial activism. It is judicial conservatism. And when there are rights established through decades of jurisprudence, like the ones guaranteeing individual sexual autonomy, then following that logic to its conclusion like Kennedy did with gay rights, is not inordinate activism but the proper role of the supreme court.

The danger now is that the court is effectively repealing established rights to vote, to love whom you want, etc. political conservatives are not always judicial conservatives. As in the 1930s Lochner Era, sometimes they are ridiculously activist and destructive.

That makes sense to me. It's about equal protection under the law. Legislators don't always do the right thing. The buck stops at the Supreme Court.

You know, you could replace "one woman" in the first quote with "many women" and have something that Warren Jeffs would most likely support. I think the two justices are trying to make the case for the superiority of religion (specifically fundamentalist Christianity) over the sciences, even as the latter is showing itself to be more prescient about today's world than any religion ever has.

It's a variation of the "exposing racism is racism" argument.

You called?