The U.S. Supreme CourtToday, the Supreme Court will take up the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), the law signed by Bill Clinton that denied benefits and equal treatment to same-sex couples. This follows yesterday’s interesting, and at times heated, debate over Proposition 8 in the Hollingsworth case. I will be on MSNBC today discussing the case with NPR’s Here and Now at 12 and then Martin Bashir at 4 p.m.
While some of us have been cautioning people for weeks that this Court was more likely to look for a way to avoid a major decision and could avoid a decision entirely through standing, many were disappointed with the tenor of the questions yesterday. Members like Chief Justice John Roberts seemed openly peeved by people pushing him toward a decision on equality for homosexuals. As expected, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was the most provocative with questions like “We decide what the law is. I’m curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?”
However, even Justice Anthony Kennedy, viewed as the key swing voter, expressed uncertainly about whether the trend toward equality would result in a magnificent end or go over “the cliff.” It was clear that the justices viewed this as a “new” question and had reservations about deciding it for the nation. Indeed, they looked like so many elderly drivers in Florida driving slowly on the highway with their turn signal on, looking desperately for an off-ramp.
That off-ramp could be standing since this case has significant problems on whether the proponents of the law have sufficient injury to demand relief before the Court. If dismissed on standing, that would also mean that the Ninth Circuit also lacked standing. That would leave the district court decision and same sex marriage would be restored in California. However, there would be no sweeping new protection secured in the case.
Another off-ramp was hinted at by Kennedy who openly wondering if the case was wrongly accepted. The Court can simply dismiss a case as premature and mistakingly granted. Many leaders on the Court like Earl Warren wanted to speak with a strong or a single voice on major issues. Absent such a consensus, some might prefer to toss the case rather than produce a fractured decision. It is clear that some justices remain undecided on the fundamental question, though most of us would not view this as a “new” question. The right to marry is not a new question. Nor is equality. Indeed, the gay rights movement is hardly new. Yet, this is an incrementalist Court that historically tries to avoid getting in front of the nation on divisive questions.
That brings us to DOMA and today’s argument. After the indecision expressed yesterday, it seems hard to believe that the justices would express certainty on the fundamental right today in the DOMA context. Many had hoped that the Court would simply find the law unconstitutional as a violation of equal protection and extend heightened scrutiny to sexual orientation. When Clinton signed this law, many condemned it as open discrimination. Indeed, it is frustrating for civil libertarians to see Clinton and Senators like Claire McCaskill come out expressing their rather belated conclusion that same-sex couples deserve equal treatment in marriage. When such decision requires more courage, they were no where to be found and, in Clinton’s case, openly worked against gay rights.
With even Kennedy expressing uncertainly yesterday, a ruling recognizing equality seems a bit more difficult today. Yet, a ruling upholding DOMA would be equally sweeping. This case also has a number of off-ramps. Standing in this case for the members of Congress is highly questionable. I represented Democratic and Republican members challenging the Libyan war and we were dismissed on standing grounds. That could be the result here, though it would be a bitter end if both landmark cases end in procedural dismissals.
Another intermediate resolution would be for the Court to strike down DOMA not only equality grounds but federalism grounds — avoiding the creation of a new fundamental protection for gays and lesbians. The Court could hold that Congress was interfering with a state question (the definition of marriage) by denying benefits to all same-sex couples (including those from states recognizing same-sex marriage). In so holding, the Court would not be holding that there is an equal protection for homosexuals but rather that this is a matter left to the states. That would still be a victory for gay rights but not the one most deserved from this case.
Timmy,
I was willing to be your savior, until you used me as an excuse to spread your hate.
You suck. See you in hell, looking up at me. Happy Easter!
Besides, Biblical literalism is a fairly new and ridiculous development in the history of Christianity. It belies all common sense in addition to being in conflict with how the book is used and understood by the vast majority of Christians. It is a practice designed by men to control other dumber men incapable or unwilling to think for themselves. Treating “2001” as the literal truth? Makes just as much sense, which is to say, none at all.
You mistake mockery for dodging, Timmeh.
Gene H.
Good way of dodging a question that obviously you don’t like the answer to.
Assume that “2001: A Space Odyssey” is, in fact, true.
Where is HAL? Will the Monolith makers ever reveal themselves? If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce do they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does?
One can be compassionate without changing ones principle. Compassion doesn’t mean acceptance if that requires a change in moral standing.
Tony C
The Bible is true. What you do not mention is that the law was given to the Jews. We Gentiles are not under the law but rather Grace. This topic is on Gay marriage. For Christians, we must follow what the Bible teaches on the subject. You and all alike have to accept that whether you agree or not just like we have to accept your beliefs even if we do not agree. Our disagreement though will not change what the Bible teaches. As a result, I ask: Assume that the Bible is in fact true, then where do you believe that puts all who are Gay is respect to judgement from a Holy God?
Happy Easter for my savior is ALIVE!
The answer to that is not that the individual is flawed intellectually, but flawed morally and socially.
The fatal flaw in religiosity is that if a follower is actively adhering to certain select writings, then that human is acknowledging an ability to use its grey matter to think independently enough to make choices as between certain specific writings within an entirety of writing, and, so, if the organism can think independently, then why not apply that standard to all of its activities and choices? Why not chose compassion and inclusion over exclusion and injury?
Timmy: If you teach at a university and can’t understand that one should be accountable to their actions then you are worthless as an educator.
You pretend your religion is full of love and kindness and “truth”, but when that doesn’t work to convince somebody, out come the insults and the truly hateful, ugly agenda of oppression and control of others by force “for their own good” because you believe they are lesser people than you.
The question isn’t about people being “accountable” for their actions (by which I think you mean “punished”), the people arguing with you are not anarchists; everybody here believes people should be “accountable” for wrongs or crimes that they commit.
So the question is about defining what is a crime. Your definition seems to be grounded in your personal revulsion, your appeal to your authority (the Bible), and the egocentric certainty of a five year old.
The Bible is just wrong in its laws, you should not put your children to death for disobedience, you should not stone a stranger to death for gathering firewood on the Sabbath, you should not sacrifice any of your virgin female captives on the altar so God can be pleased by the smell of their burning flesh (as Moses did).
Most adults understand that the Bible cannot be infallible if it commands actions that they know are just flat out wrong, like those above, and most adults understand that some of those biblical laws are from an ancient and far more brutal culture that saw people as the property of patriarchs, and that laws supporting that culture no longer apply.
How one justifies the outright rejection of those cultural demands is immaterial, the fact is that people that claim to adhere to the Bible do not do so absolutely, they adhere only to certain passages in the Bible. They do not engage in animal or human sacrifice, they do not keep slaves, or sell their daughters, or wear tassels with a blue thread on the corners of their clothing to identify themselves to others as God’s children (as God commanded, btw). They do not prevent the crippled or malformed from approaching the altar. They do not beat their children or wives or put them to death for disobedience.
So even if the Bible is your authority, the question is how you choose which Biblical laws to keep, and which to ignore, or gloss over, or disobey while pretending to agree.
Obviously the Bible can give you no guidance on that, even Christ’s first words claim he did not come to change one jot or tittle (tiny marks in Hebrew writing like commas or dashes in English writing) of the Old Testament, that nothing there should change. So Christ unconditionally endorses every law laid out in the Old Testament; He is no help there.
Most adult-minded Christians decide to land on the side of rejecting what appear to be the culturally driven Biblical law, and keep the humanitarian Biblical law (or more generally, reject the laws that demand harm be done to others, and embrace the laws that demand charity, forgiveness, kindness, sharing, and self-sacrifice). The Biblical law denigrating the crippled or malformed is clearly cultural and anti-humanitarian. The laws on beating children or wives or putting strangers to death for gathering firewood on the Sabbath, are anti-humanitarian. The idea of putting your daughter to death for losing her virginity before marriage is anti-humanitarian.
And the laws against homosexuality are anti-humanitarian as well. That is how heterosexual college kids can sincerely call themselves believers in the Bible but embrace homosexual friends without a hint of anxiety, they believe THAT part of the Bible is NOT God’s word, perhaps inserted by a homophobic fraud in transcription or translation along the way. Because they understand the world, and that humans do that sort of thing, and that because there are clearly some things in the Bible that are just untrue, it is up to them to figure out what is “real” in the Bible and what is not.
The few passages about homosexuality will be discarded too, as brutal, hateful, cultural laws that do not apply to the modern world. Already a super-majority of the next American generation of Christians believes that, and in ten or twenty years, they will overwhelm your militant, hateful, harmful, bigoted and childish interpretation.
Whether this Supreme Court does it, or a future one does it, full equality will come. You can gnash your teeth and spout hate filled rhetoric, or you can examine your soul and decide why you have let other men choose which Biblical laws you should obey and which you should ignore. Perhaps you can think for yourself on what rule for dividing those laws is right, and perhaps you will see, as the younger generation sees, that you are on the wrong side of this argument.
Timmy
“but the truth would have to be told.”
~+~
Which truth? Would it be the one where their son deserved to die?
Yes Timmy……
That your a damn fool…. That’s the truth…. Now… Do you fel free….
I didn’t say I would tell them in the way you describe. I would first console them and allow them to mourn but the truth would have to be told. The Truth is what sets one free.
Darren,
We both have known people like timmy. Look into their eyes and you see….nothing. Cold dead eyes.
Some were famous and some infamous; too many to remember all of them, but some stand out more than others. I remember talking to J. B. Stoner and he had those eyes. So did a Mississippi racist attorney named Richard Barrett. He had those eyes.
Incapable of empathy, and although always wrong, never uncertain.
Timmy Wrote:
“Darren Smith
(referring to him having the fortitude to tell a mother her gay son who died of AIDS that he deserved to die for what happened)
yes I would! That is the truth. I believe homosexuality to be an abomination and no matter the circumstance, the truth I would tell.
~+~
Then it is apparent that you certainly show no sense of decency in respecting the well being of others if it involes something other than your coveted and precious view of your own opinion, regardless of how contemptable it is from the point of view of everyone else.
It is apparent that you haven’t the life experiences that many of us here have in dealing with tragic events. You claim you are expressing the truth about this abomination as you call it. Well here is some reality of how others will look at how you have crafted yourself.
Now imagine showing a little care for your fellow human. Such as after you just went to a DUI fatal accident where someone got stuck in the car and burned to death. After you clear the scene, you have to contact the mother of the driver to inform her her son just died. You, as you claimed with your approach to a gay person dying, would apply the same treatment to this mother. You would say “Your son burned up and maybe suffered greatly. That is the truth of that abomination of him driving drunk and he deserved it.”
An Honourable person would have told the mother “He was going highway speed and crashed. He went quickly” (referring in your mind to the car speed, not her son’s death, but she gets what she needs to hear for a measure of solace), Saving this mother from years of terrible thoughts and anguish of how her son could have suffered. You don’t have to hurt the person and especially import your own opinions to castigate her son being a drunk driver and getting what he deserved, further distressing her. But clearly by your own words you would terribly distress this mother, and then go down to the substation to have coffee with your buddies, and brag about how you “told her” how her son deserved to die. Great man you are.
But, that is the type of person your words make you appear as, a self righteous poseur with delusions of grandeur, wit and intelligence and a dim regard for the humanity of others who are different.
Timmy,
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone….”
“A minister who supports Gay marriage and would actually marry them, is not a Christian.”
************************************
That is going to come as a real surprise to the mainstream Christian church that particular minister belongs. His church is beginning to break out of outdated thinking and moving rapidly into the 21st century. Some members of the congregation are still stuck in the wrong century, like timmy, but they will come around.
As your your assertion, Jesus said “I and the Father are one,” as meaning homosexuality is an “abomination,” is such a stretch of both logic and reading comprehension that makes me think you better go back and repeat third grade. In fact, that makes me think you were born into the wrong century, by at least eight hundred years. Whoever told you that needs to learn a bit more theology.
timmy, as I said before, you and those like you have lost. Just as the losers who screamed ‘miscegenation’ at the idea of mixed race marriages.
Then there is your claim, ” I have many Gay friends…” Yeah, I bet you know a black person too. You probably know far more gay people than you suspect, some of them in your own family. You may know them, Sparky, but they are not your “friends.” You can take that to the bank.
I will leave Robert A. Heinlein with the last word in this comment:
“A minister who supports Gay marriage and would actually marry them, is not a Christian.”
That’s funny.
There are lot of Christians including ministers who would say hating anyone let alone homosexuals would make someone not a Christian.
It’s simply irony but I like it.
Otteray Scribe
A minister who supports Gay marriage and would actually marry them, is not a Christian. Jesus said “I and the Father are one” that means he too considers homosexuality an abomination. Like I stated earlier I do not “hate” the sinner but rather the “sin”. I have many Gay friends but they know I do not condone their behavior.
Darren Smith
yes I would! That is the truth. I believe homosexuality to be an abomination and no matter the circumstance, the truth I would tell.