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.
Olly,
They used the BIBLE to justify Slavery. They also used the bible to justify discrimination.
Your argument is a bit backwards.
Christians could easily say that because it is in the bible, that they should be able to own
slaves, and by not allowing them to own slaves, that is going against their religious freedom.
Inga,
What do you believe prevents any society from justifying slavery if you don’t believe we have inalienable rights?
If only Sarah Palin had preached more than just abstinence to Bristol. I waited for my daughters to tell me they were in a serious relationship before we took a trip to the doctor’s office for BC pills. BC pills alone won’t protect from STDs though, as is common knowlege. Good thing for the free condoms. My daughters never needed an abortion or had an unwanted pregnancy. All of the had children after being married. So the teenage intervention and support by mom did not turn them into wanton promiscuous hussies.
Condoms are handed out like candy here.
My daughter started collecting the condoms they hand out in school.
Yes, they hand out condoms in schools. and NOBODY gets upset over it.
Same thing when my daughter was in high school, in our dinky little redneck town. One day she came home with a big bag full of condoms of all colors. Wow! I didn’t know they came in all those colors. She spread them out on her bed and we counted at least 40. Really? 40? That’s a lot of sex…wooooo. Everyone got a bag full and some of the kids were stunned. Others thought it was great fun……. It was hilarious the quantity. So…….we blew a bunch up and made a mobile out of some of them to hang over her bed.
I also marched her down to the doctors office to be put on birth control pills. She kept saying: “Mooooom….I’m not going to have sex right now.” I’m saying: maybe YOU don’t want to but someone else might want to have sex WITH you and even so, you might change your mind…. you never know. So. You will take the pills and be safe one way or the other. You don’t want to end up like Angela (a girl who got pregnant in 10th grade and dropped out of school) and have all your options closed off at your young age. Do you? Right now….you have the world available. You can choose to do anything you want but, if you get accidentally pregnant all those choices are changed.”
I am now the proud Grandmother of two fabulous children and my daughter is a successful career professional. My nagging worked!!!
DBQ – you have to remember to refreshen your condoms. The one in your wallet from when you were 14 is not going to work when you are 39.
@ Justagirl
You are right, they have the right to say NO.
They just have to be much smarter in the REASON they are saying NO
True. But is it now that if you are Christian, you must lie about your faith and hide your faith. Like the Jews in Spain during the Inquisition. Is this what we have become? In order to keep your faith you must hide it? This is WHY the founders of this country fled England and why the First Amendment was written in the beginning.
Note: I’m not a religious person and have no problems with people of the same sex wanting to get married. I don’t care. What I do care about is losing our freedoms of expression, religion and being FORCED to lie or hide our political or religious thoughts out of fear. Fear of retaliation. Fear of losing your job. Fear of physical harm.
If this is the type of society that we are turning into, then I fear for my grandchildren. I’ll be dead already. 😐
Isaac,
Do you believe JT has a right to set civility rules? Should he be able to ban participants because they do not fit within his defined standards of behavior?
JAG, I like to think the public would side w/ the righteous Angelo. But, the public would most likely never know, unless Angelo took a principled stand and said, “sue me” I’m not going to drop another client to satisfy you. As I said, the prudent course for a businessperson is to drop a hetero client and take the gay order. Civil litigation is out of control on this side of the pond, JAG. Righteous people do all sorts of concessions to avoid litigation. The ADA[American w/ Disabilities Act] created an entire industry of attorneys nitpicking small businesses. The ADA was a well intended law, signed by a Republican President. But, when attorneys see protected classes, they see $$$$$$!
JAG, I have worked product liability cases defending foreign companies. They are ASTOUNDED by our litigious culture. I felt a lot of compassion for this small Canadian company that made a part of a walk-in freezer door. The door mechanism allegedly malfunctioned causing a person to be locked in a freezer and losing several fingers and toes to frostbite. The Canadians had to hire an attorney in the US to defend them. Luckily, they got a good, honest, hard working guy. An attorney I have done a lotta work for over the years. Otherwise, these Canadians experience could have been MUCH worse. The case settled and I think the Canadians got out of it for less than 6 figures. Now, in the US, that’s a victory. I never talked w/ them after the settlement, but I doubt they considered their getting out of this lawsuit for less than 100k a victory. We suspected the door was sabotaged.
Here’s one for the road.
What was the Founders take on same sex?
WARNING: The following will be deemed ‘homophobic’ by the hetrophobe movement.
But that is their problem…
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/03/what-the-founders-believed-about-homosexuality/
I get the feeling the Founders knew something we have buried & try to forget.
Though many of the Founders called for the death penalty & T Jefferson called for castration, I do NOT. I was a sex sinner once, ladies only please, 🙂 & I repented when I asked Jesus Christ to forgive my sin & sin deeds & He graciously did. So as a ‘recovering sinner’ I can’t & do not condemn any one.
I CAN however, point out that all sex out side of a one man one woman life time commitment is wrong, a huge sin & ultimately degrading & will be destructive to any society. You think the mess this nation is in came about by accident? By the way, sex sin isn’t the only sin taking US down. We have liars, thieves, swindlers, corruption up to our eyes, control freak ‘progressive-ism’, war mongers, many of them in office…& other albatrosses around our national neck.
If there was a side by side comparison of when this country started kicking Nature’s God under the secular bus & when our problems started, the further we were taken from Nature’s God the worse the problems became. Turning BACK to Elohim & His [VIRGIN born] Son & repenting IS the only hope for ALL nations & individuals.
You are now free to Rules For Radicals me to death. 😀 It won’t faze me, but go ahead, expose your easy to manipulate Homer Simpson self. I stand unapologetic against the go along to get along go with the flow path of least resistance mental illness so pervasive these days.
LOL!! Willie Nelson put it this way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG9hCSUckCg
I stood against the homo movement
To get my fair share of abuse…:-D
SamFox
Dust Bunny Queen
1, June 27, 2015 at 8:01 pm
Regarding the cake baking the structure of the society insists that the baker make no discrimination regardless of whether or not there is a contractual agreement or not.
Nope. A contractor is NOT obligated to take on all contracts presented to him/her. They have the right to chose NOT to work or enter into a contract.
A person who contracts to do work for another person according to his or her own processes and methods; the contractor is not subject to another’s control except for what is specified in a mutually binding agreement for a specific job
————–
You are right, they have the right to say NO.
They just have to be much smarter in the REASON they are saying NO.
Say they are too busy, NOBODY can fault a business for being too busy.
NOBODY can sue a business for being too busy.
BUT, saying NO, because they people are gay, or BLACK, or Jewish… that is NOT OK.
saying no, because they think it is their right to discriminate, that is NOT OK.
How hard is this to understand for some of these Christian bakers?
They got what they deserved as far as I am concerned.. They are TOO STUPID to be
in business. 😀
BY the way., when I go to a Jewish Wedding, I am NOT condoning their religion, or taking on their
beliefs, I am attending a Jewish wedding… NOTHING MORE.
When I buy a gift for a couple who is getting married in a church, I am NOT condoning their
god… I am buying a couple a gift to celebrate their love… NOT their freaking religion.
So, when a baker is asked to make a cake for a couple, they should make the darned cake,
OR just NOT have a business of making wedding cakes.
By the way, I LOVE how they will make divorce cakes, caked to celebrate weddings for DOGS,
but, it is offensive to them to make a wedding cake for a couple who is in love. ONLY in America.. SMH.
Good heavens! What are they teaching those sweet little Swedish children in schools?! 🙀 Squeeky ya hear that?!
I can tell you right NOW, without even looking it up, as to why European countries
have lower stats.
Equal Access to HIGH QUALITY Health Care and NO FDA…. in the 80’s Europe was using better drugs, better drugs,
(HIV Positive Americans were being arrested for importing those drugs)
means lower Infection rates, Some men who are HIV have almost no detectable
infection in their blood… Less Viral load in the blood, means lower rates of infecting
others. and also Condom use…. Condoms are handed out like candy here.
My daughter started collecting the condoms they hand out in school.
Yes, they hand out condoms in schools. and NOBODY gets upset over it. 😀
Regarding the cake baking the structure of the society insists that the baker make no discrimination regardless of whether or not there is a contractual agreement or not.
Nope. A contractor is NOT obligated to take on all contracts presented to him/her. They have the right to chose NOT to work or enter into a contract.
A person who contracts to do work for another person according to his or her own processes and methods; the contractor is not subject to another’s control except for what is specified in a mutually binding agreement for a specific job
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Independent+Contractor
“There is a conflict in the US between religious beliefs and civil rights – notably in the refusal of business owners with ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’ to cater to gay weddings. Which raises the question, are these religious folk justified in their actions? That is a question that takes a Solomon – ironically he of 700 wives and 300 concubines – to decide.
The answer is no.
The Supreme Court has given great leeway to those beliefs that only affect the individual – say in the use of the hallucinogenics sacred to native religions. Certainly if your faith requires self-flagellation, no one is going to stop you. You can even whip another adult, in a religious frenzy, if he consents to it.
But try whipping another non-consenting adult – or a child – and see how far you get. Only religious extremists could believe that would be kosher.
And now we are back to the florists and the bakers whose religious sensibilities are offended by gay marriage. Or the pharmacists whose faith is insulted by the ‘morning after’ pill. Here the prevailing authority is the law. Much as a baker cannot refuse a wedding cake to a minority or mixed-race couple he may not refuse it to a gay couple. Why?
Because we do not live in a theocracy. Religious strictures do not trump civil liberties.
There is an exception for religious institutions, churches and the like, to keep peace with their religious beliefs. Otherwise, people, who participate in the American marketplace, cannot use their religion – or any other personal bigotry – to discriminate. Thank God.”
http://thecriticalmind.com/2015/01/do-religious-beliefs-trump-civil-rights/
Inga –
Again with the semantics. We elect our representatives. Indirectly or directly we are a democracy.
Regarding the cake baking the structure of the society insists that the baker make no discrimination regardless of whether or not there is a contractual agreement or not. A business is a business is a business and a business falls under the larger umbrella, the one that protects all from bias and bigotry.
When a baker states that their religion prevents them from decorating a cake for gays then the smaller umbrella is attempting to trump the larger umbrella. Whether or not the gay is protesting too much or the baker thinks he or she will go to hell, the larger umbrella of rights protection is more legally correct.
Discrimination is discrimination. If a business is given the right to discriminate on one thing it will set the precedent for another and then another. It is not about what is perfectly in balance it is about the direction we are going in. The direction away from discrimination, regardless of the unfortunate Christians that will have crazy dreams, is the correct turn.
The main argument coming from those that support the right of a business owner to discriminate and seem to be appalled that gays can now marry seems to be, ‘Where will it end?’ We already have Chicken Little warning of the demise of mankind due to HIV and gays kidnapping children. The answer is yet to be determined. When the pendulum swings out in response to persecution typically it swings to another extreme. However how extreme typically depends on the degree of persecution.
The one thing we do know is the direction toward persecution, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and other discriminations. That is where we come from. So, it would seem to me that the direction to go in is the one of brother and sisterhood and the less the protesting perhaps the softer the landing.
Or, the sky could indeed be falling.
@ Justagirl
Can Angelo be forced to make a cake for the KKK ? A Nazi cake. A cake celebrating ISIS? What if Angelo is a black baker. What if he is a Jewish baker.
Do you condone FORCING him to make something that is morally offensive or offensive to his religion, whether he wants to or not?
Where do we draw the lines? Is it just Christians who have to do everything that is demanded of them. Do Muslim bakers have the right to not bake a cake with Mohammed’s image on it?
“Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”
― Thomas Jefferson
@Justagirl
Thank you for the link! I saved it in my gay stats file. I have seen numbers that gay marriage is an additional risk factor for HIV because the parties stop using condoms under the belief that they are committed. But I can’t find the link, and am not sure if that was a good study or not. IIRC, it was prior to widespread anti-viral use. Common sense would dictate that anything which reduces the amount of Gay promiscuity would positively impact the HIV rate. Perversely, that is what reduces the HIV rate in ISIS controlled territories, the Mid East, and Africa, because watching your bud get jailed, chunked off a building, or beheaded, or whatever, is sure going to make you think twice before doing it with a stranger.
The factor which MAY be at play in Europe, is the gay nightclub scene, which you report to be far less gay than in America. Here is a story from The New Republic which touches heavily on why America has such a high rate. Here’s a teaser, and the rest of the story is at the link:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
civil rights of Americans trumps religious beliefs
No it doesn’t. The First Amendment protects our right to not be forced into a particular religion or to participate in religion at all. It protects our right to speak or NOT to speak. Art is a form of speech and to be compelled to create art that is offensive to you for many reasons, including religious, is prohibited by the First Amendment.
The fact that there are many OTHER places to get the contract done….of your wedding cake or your catering done is also a factor. There is not a system wide banning of gay wedding cakes or Jim Crow types of laws abridging certain people (gays) from getting service like it was in the old South. If there were….then I would agree that Civil Rights are being violated. They are not. There is NO civil right violation if someone doesn’t want to be contracted to work for you.
Individual people are exercising their Free Speech and Freedom of Religion rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
“There may be some true religious objections, but civil rights of Americans trumps religious beliefs.”‘
Inga/Annie,
First of all, there is no way for you to know what is in a persons heart and secondly, a right granted through government is alienable and the right of conscience is inalienable. You have stated many times you do not believe we have natural, inalienable rights. All the records of that are here in the RIL for anyone to go look up.
What that means Annie/Inga, whatever is that you side with the percentage of the population that believe slavery is okay as long as government says it is okay. Now you may say there is no way you would support slavery but the only justification for ending it was the claim of equality and inalienable rights as chartered in the Declaration of Independence.The fact you side with those that used the denial of natural, inalienable rights to justify slavery says all anyone needs to know about you and your ilk.
Deny inalienable rights and you own histories justification for slavery.
Afren’t you a peach. Nicely done!