Cara L. Gallagher, weekend contributor
History happened yesterday. Will you remember where you were when the same-sex marriage decisions came down? I will. I was inside the Court when we all sat up somewhat shocked to hear the first case of the day was Obergefell v. Hodges. Again, I am lousy at predicting what cases we’ll get decisions on each day. This fact is already entered into the record. But because it was a decision of such importance, for the first time, I stopped writing, listened, and looked around to see how the audience, the public, were not only hearing but experiencing what I was hearing.
It wasn’t obvious from the start of Kennedy’s reading of the majority (made up of the four liberal justices) decision that it would come out on the side of the same-sex couples, many of which were in the Court to hear their case. He started off referencing the “millennia” of the institution of marriage. Those who listened to the oral arguments back in March will recall Kennedy used this word a lot to question Mary Bonauto, the attorney for the same-sex couples, on why the definition of marriage should be expanded to include same-sex couples when, for so long, it has been reserved to one man-one woman.
Kennedy quickly addressed the legal justification for supporting the same-sex couples. The majority ruled same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry, just as opposite sex couples do. The Due Process clause and Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment protect this right and states must recognize the marriage licenses of couples. To the majority, the definition of marriage is not static and has never been. It has evolved from a time when women were married off to men chosen by their parents for financial gain, where their rights were subsumed to men (coverture), to one that primarily served procreative purposes, and finally to the version that exists today – marry who you love for whatever reason you want. Such personal choice has been celebrated in a patchwork system where some states allow gay marriage while others do not. But today’s decision mandates uniformity in legal doctrine. According to the majority, “A first premise of the Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.”
Emboldening the majority’s defense of their opinion is the belief that same-sex couples with children deserve the dignity and eradication of stigma that will flow from not simply social norms and practices, but legal acceptance of their unions from the states in which they live. Yes, a federal decision on this matter quashes public debate and takes the political decision-making power out of the hands of states, some moving faster on same-sex marriage legislation than others. On that point, the majority said, “The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right. This is why ‘fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.’” (The latter quote is cited in the decision from West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette)
It was at this moment that I stopped and looked around at the faces in the Court. Listening with smiles and quiet tears were several people sitting near me. I saw the petitioners and a member of the clergy sitting, perhaps appropriately, on opposite sides of the aisle in the general public area. Justice Stevens was in the Court as well. In the seats of the Supreme Court bar, which are front and center inside the Court, was notable same-sex marriage advocate and U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Pam Karlan, Mary Bonauto, and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. The Court often feels like it’s in an unnecessary state of lock down – especially on decision days – so the security marshals ban celebrations, cheers, cries, or any other expression. But the feeling was jubilation, complete and total satisfaction. Once dismissed, many near me stood up, hugged, and wiped away tears.
As jubilant and electrified as some people were, the subsequent dissent read by Chief Justice Roberts killed any and all enthusiasm in the room. Roberts may have read his dissent – one of four dissents written by every member of the minority group – to remind everyone that yesterday’s Obamacare ruling is not the liberal pivot you may have thought you were getting from the Roberts Court. I wrote about the potential for this pivot just last night after the King case was announced. In his blistering dissent that lasted as long, if not longer, than the time it took Kennedy to read the majority opinion, he openly threw shine on his bench mates: “Today, five lawyers have ordered states to change their laws,””Just who do we think we are?”
The power to decide laws defining marriage has and should forever be a power held by the states, derived from the people, according to Roberts’ dissent. “This Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.” This is the default response the conservative justices often give in federalist cases like this one.
What stung the most and hit the people who’d just been told they are equal in the eyes of the law the hardest was his final paragraph: “Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause.” Further, “If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
The “acceptance” line read to a class of people for whom acceptance both socially and constitutionally is so seldom protected by the Federal government, was the hardest to watch wash over those sitting near me.
Roberts may have gotten the last word in, but the same-sex and LGBTQ members and allies gathered together in the biggest crowd of people I’ve ever seen outside the SCOTUS, got the last laugh. They have legal protections rooted in two fundamental Constitutional principles. This decision came down at the perfect time as some cities celebrate their Pride Day this weekend and thousands of others will spend their celebrations at wedding receptions and enjoying honeymoons.
Follow Cara as she spends one more day covering the final three SCOTUS cases this term. @SupremeBystandr
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/05/27/the-great-excuse-obama-blames-the-constitution-for-his-disadvantage-and-the-need-to-circumvent-congress/
Professor Turley calls us a “Representative Democracy”.
“While we still have a representative democracy, it still has democratic elements.”
Samefox,
the fact that you think that a country can be BOTH fascist and communist is just FUNNY
and totally laughable.
hahahahahaha…. My GOD, Americans are funny sometimes.
Nick Spinelli
I see what you are saying. and I agree, it will happen.
The sad thing is, had those dumb ars, Christian Fundamentalists just said they were BUSY,
and NOT tried to make it a political issue, then there would not be people looking
at doing this kind of thing.
as dumb as I think the general public is, I do TRULY believe that if a case comes along
with an Angelo, that the public will be able to see the difference, and they will
NOT hold it again Angelo for just being busy.
What’s up with calling the USA a ‘democracy’? We have always been, till recently, a Constitutional Republic. Now we are more like a fascist/communist centrally planned state. Look up the diff between a republic & a democracy. There is a HUGE diff….
SCOTUS just gave it up for the hetrophobes.
Saying most of the US Founders were deists shows a huge lack of research or an out right lie. “Nature’s God” ring any bells?
“Thomas Jefferson
3rd U.S. President, Drafter and Signer of the Declaration of Independence
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event.”
–Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, p. 237. ”
Quote from http://christianity.about.com/od/independenceday/a/foundingfathers.htm
Roe V Wade gave US millions of dead babies. What are we gonna be cursed because of now? Accepting & legitimizing fornication, adultery & porn was bad enough, now we have to wade through yet another perversion.
Emotions are good, in their place. But when emotionalism takes over & replaces common sense, the nation ruled by it won’t last long. All the hue & cry about recognizing homosex perversion being normal or natural is based on emotionalism & feelings, logic, morality & common sense were trampled on long before the ‘gay’ thing came up.
More coming…
SamFox
*protected*
Squeeky,
This might interest you, since you are concerned with HIV rates and Same Sex marriage
and the possibility of it making it worse.
Stats show, it LOWERS rates of HIV.
https://books.google.se/books?id=PFpd8dq7jJcC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=HIV+gay+Sweden&source=bl&ots=HF00sjCerK&sig=Xn2B1oTspwh6M92VVablhMD2HHs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PSuPVZ7JE8SwsQHAroDgDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=HIV%20gay%20Sweden&f=false
the more Gay Friendly the country, the fewer HIV cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate
By the way, Sweden has roughly 6,000 HIV Cases.
we have a lower rate than in the USA.
@Jill
I don’t think that it is only gay men who screw around like crazy. Heterosexuals do it, too. Just not in as great a number. And they don’t get as sick. And forget heterosexual HIV. About the only hetero people who get it are women who have sex with bi-sexual men. Gays are like 2% of the population, and they get 78%+ of the HIV infections. You have been fed a myth, a POLITICAL reality to cover up REAL reality.
Don’t believe me. Believe the CDC:
Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) a represent approximately 2% of the United States population, yet are the population most severely affected by HIV. In 2010, young gay and bisexual men (aged 13-24 years) accounted for 72% of new HIV infections among all persons aged 13 to 24, and 30% of new infections among all gay and bisexual men. At the end of 2011, an estimated 500,022 (57%) persons living with an HIV diagnosis in the United States were gay and bisexual men, or gay and bisexual men who also inject drugs.
In 2010, gay and bisexual men accounted for 63% of estimated new HIV infections in the United States and 78% of infections among all newly infected men. From 2008 to 2010, new HIV infections increased 22% among young (aged 13-24) gay and bisexual men and 12% among gay and bisexual men overall.
In 2013, in the United States, gay and bisexual men accounted for 81% (30,689) of the 37,887 estimated HIV diagnoses among all males aged 13 years and older and 65% of the 47,352 estimated diagnoses among all persons receiving an HIV diagnosis that year.
Sexual risk behaviors account for most HIV infections in gay and bisexual men. Most gay and bisexual men acquire HIV through anal sex, which is the riskiest type of sex for getting or transmitting HIV. For sexually active gay and bisexual men, the most effective ways to prevent transmitting or becoming infected with HIV are to be on antiretroviral medications (to either treat or prevent infection) and to correctly use a condom every time for anal or vaginal sex. Gay men are at increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), like syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, and CDC recommends that all sexually active gay and bisexual be tested at least annually for these infections and obtain treatment, if necessary.
Having more sex partners compared to other men means gay and bisexual men have more opportunities to have sex with someone who can transmit HIV or another STD. Similarly, among gay men, those who have more partners are more likely to acquire HIV.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/gender/msm/facts/
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
There may come a day in which homosexuals will have to be made a protected class. We are going to see some homophobic merchants attempting to deny service by using a religiously based pretense. There may be some true religious objections, but civil rights of Americans trumps religious beliefs. Prejudice against black people used to be associated with religious belief also. Society changed with regard to serving black customers….. after they were made a protest class. Same thing may have to happen with homosexual people.
Inga – I see a day when heterosexual white males become a protected class.
When I worked @ The Drake Hotel in Chicago I became friends w/ the pastry chef. I put on 10 lbs. Anyway, he was world famous and the consummate Austrian. He was the most sought after wedding cake guy in the Chicago area. He would be like the Soup Nazi. If you tried to tell him how to make the cake, “NO CAKE FOR YOU.” He did this because that was his nature. But, he also was like that because he could be. He had WAY MORE biz than he could handle. If the wedding was @ The Drake, then you got one of his cakes, guaranteed. But, if the wedding were elsewhere, you best be on your best behavior. He told me for June weddings, he would turn down 10 requests for every one he accepted.
Reblogged this on Alina's Blog.
@ Justagirl
Making a wedding cake or any specialty order item is a “contractual” activity. This is separate from the day to day open door operations of a bakery. The day to day operations dictate that you serve anyone who comes into your establishment without distinction as long as they can pay and aren’t making a disruption to your business. No one disputes this and all of the instances of the bakers etc who have been vilified or driven out of business did not discriminate in their day to day ordinary course of operation.
HOWEVER……entering into a contract to make a specialty item is completely different. The baker, or any other contractor is not obligated to take each and every contract that is proposed. The baker and the client negotiate on the price, size of cake, ingredients of cake, decorations, delivery time etc etc etc. The contractor can decline to be contracted for all sorts of reasons and since the contract is outside of the day to day operations of the business, declining to be contracted does not adhere to the same standards as a public accommodation type of business.
The business owner/contractor is protected by the First Amendment and not obligated to create speech or art that is against his/her religion. This is something that they can’t do in their day to day business.
The contractor is not your slave to be FORCED into doing work that he/she doesn’t want to do.
You also can’t force the baker to make items that he/she wouldn’t ordinarily make either. So you can’t go into the baker and DEMAND that they make your favorite kind of pastry when they don’t do so already. You can ask. He can say no.
Squeeky,
Do you condemn promiscuity and the transmission of HIV when engaged in by heterosexuals?
Do you applaud love and commitment when engaged in by gay men?
What I read from you is an unshakable belief that only gay men engage in promiscuity when even a quick look at heterosexual behavior shows buckets of rampant promiscuity. This heterosexual promiscuity can and does lead to transmission of HIV and many other STDs. Do you condemn this behavior in heterosexuals?
I see many loving heterosexual partners and many loving homosexual partners. Aren’t these people all to be commended and encouraged? Will you take a stand and commend acts of love and kindness no matter who is committing those acts?
JAG, After civil rights laws were passed in the 60’s there was discrimination in housing. The NAACP and other groups sent out, and still send out, “testers.” Now, back in the day they were quite necessary. As time went on. they became less so. But, there were horrible abuses of well meaning landlords getting caught in trick bags. I can guarantee you, there will be, and probably already are, gay testers looking for discrimination. They will catch people that are discriminating. But, they will also catch the Angelo’s, putting the burden on Angelo to prove he was not discriminating. The way our justice system is supposed to work, is the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. But, in these scenarios, w/ the threat of bad publicity, the burden becomes the small biz owners. He has The Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. Angelo is a business man. He will crap on the hetero couple and appease the gay couple. When you create special protections, there will always be abuses. It’s just human nature. And, when you have the most litigious country in the world, w/ attorneys ready to sue, you have a climate for abuses.
JAG, It sounds like gay men in Sweden don’t have that US chip on their shoulder. Now, chip on the shoulder is not indigenous to gay men in the US. We have many people w/ chips. But I surmise gay men don’t feel like they have anything to prove in Sweden. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Squeeky, why do you think you can know what is in the hearts and minds of gay men? Why are you so certain gay men don’t have sincere love for one another? I posted several pictures of sweet elderly gay and lesbian couples that were getting married after being monogamous for decades. I could’ve posted far more. Your portrayal of gay men is so twisted and wrongheaded. Where did you learn to think this way? How many gay men do you actually know? With your revulsion towards them I am guessing, it’s none at all.
Inga – I do not say this to be mean, but to be accurate. The pictures of the gays that you posted were too old to be anything but monogamous.
Nick Spinelli
If anybody gives a baker a bad time for being too busy, I say SCREW that person.
I doubt that a gay couple would sue somebody for being too busy.
Those other bakers who made their cases political, got what they deserved.
Sorry, but, owning a business is NOT a human RIGHT, being treated equally is a human right.
and as long as Angelo was too busy to make a cake for straight people, then it should
be no problem that he say no to a gay couple because he is too busy.
People can accuse discrimination all day, BUT< the general public
can usually see the truth.
Squeek, Great poem. And “pecs” can be a double entendre. Maybe that was intended?
@Jill
IMHO, if gay men were engaging in acts of love, hardly anybody would really give a hoot. However, rampant promiscuity is the reality of gay male life. To the point where they are infecting about 30,000 gayish men with HIV a year, simply because they can’t bother with a condom.
Sheesh, this is more than drunk driving deaths, and murder deaths. And the stupid twerps are b*tching about wedding cakes??? But nobody dares say anything because somebody might call them homophobic.
You see, when you have a “favored group”, one is simply not supposed to say bad things about them. It happened with black people in the late 60’s. There they were, transitioning from having a majority of their kids born into families, to being born illegitimately to welfare moms. Nobody could say anything because they might be called racists.
Well, I say all screw all that. People are free to ooh and ahh over the poor cake-deprived gays if they want, but I prefer to write about all real problems. Sooo, I say shocking things sometimes. I tell people that gay Americans have killed more Americans in the last few decades then Nazis, Japs, Norks, the North Vietnamese, and the Muslims combined. I tell people that ISIS and the Ugandans are killing less gays than Americans do hour upon hour of every day. And that killing a few gays that way, ironically keeps the gay populations of those places safer, by discouraging the rampant promiscuity you always seem to see with gay men. That is a pretty sad thing to say, that throwing two gays off a roof is better than what we do in America when we encourage them to hook up with each other and permit crap like Grindr to exist.
Can you believe America??? We protest Confederate Flags on apps, and turn a blind eye to Grindr which is killing the f–k out of gay and bi-sexual men, and giving them all sorts of diseases besides just HIV. IMHO, that is some pretty f–ked up sh*t! Pardon my French. . .
Sheeesh, San Francisco kills far more gays each year in its bathhouses, than ISIS does chunking gays off the roofs! That is sick! Sooo, I just call gay men bad names, and tease the crap out of them. Think what you will, but can’t nobody accuse of me lying.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Justagurl,
What are you trying to explain? I’m not at odds with what you’re saying. The US has it’s own style of gayness, Sweden has another. They all identify as homosexual, none being ‘worse’ than the other. It’s all good, no judgment, no discrimination. Vive l’amour.
HHmm…
I am trying to explain this, and I am not doing a very good job..
I guess what I mean is that in Sweden we don’t really have a “Gay Scene”.. NOT like in America
where you have Flamboyant Gay bars, with half naked men dancing around to 70’s Disco.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/glbt-travelers/703082-why-gay-scene-stockholm-so-bad-str8-guys-may-amazing-but.html
Yeah, this is not that easy to explain in a short post.. 😀
It is sort of something you have to experience.