Palm Beach Marriage Protection Conference
Swing vote Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
Loser Judge Antonin Scalia said in dissent:
The decision shows the court is a "threat to American democracy." The ruling "says that my ruler and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court."
I don't quite get that logic.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote:
The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of injustice.” Ante, at 11, 23. As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?
Woof on that one! What a rebuke on the liberal supremes. They are probably saying: Those damn 3 women.
3 comments:
There is a wonderful irony in Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent. In it, he took issue with the concepts of "liberty". He argued that the petitioners in this case were not deprived of their liberty, as they have been allowed to travel and settle freely without government intervention in another state. But Clarence Thomas is a Black man married to a White woman. And until the Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, the same could have been said about his own union. He would have been free to live in a state that allowed black/white marriages, just not in the state of Virginia.
Justice Roberts said: "The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces is not contained in the constitution"
What about all men are created equal...?
If it wasn't for Verdugo and other narrow minded selfish people in Miami-Dade County GLBT equal rights advocates over the last three decades could have invested their time and efforts in other issues facing the community. Yes, we have achieved partial equality for GLBT people but there is more work to do.
Alternatively, would it not be wonderful if a few of the more enlightened conservative leaders in DC would sign on to the Employment Non Discrimination Act so these fights could be ended. Then the American people can get on with so may other issues facing our nation.
Steve Hagen, Miami Green Park Advocate
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