As the liberal, legacy media continues to make their case in an effort to save Joe Biden's bacon this November, a lot of their focus has been on the Supreme Court. The bench is now overrun with evil conservative justices, three of them placed there by the Bad Orange Man. And if he comes back into power, he could seat even more of them. The press fixates on the idea that the court might allow more restrictions on abortions, despite the fact that the justices haven't seemed to express any interest in doing more than returning the question to the states. They won't just stop with abortion, though. This week the Boston Globe dredges up another old chestnut from the political vaults with a dire warning from Scot Lehigh that you "can't take gay marriage for granted."
The high court’s reversal of abortion rights has sparked worries that other decisions based on a constitutional right to privacy may be endangered — and that’s where Alito’s dissent comes in. In the case that provoked it, several people who believe homosexuality is a sin were excluded from being jurors in a lesbian woman’s workplace discrimination lawsuit.
“That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges, namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government,” he wrote.
Alito seems to worry more about the expressive rights of conservative religionists than about the full rights of citizenship for those whose sexual orientation some religions frown upon. Still, his aside is noteworthy for reasons beyond the justice’s strangely apportioned sympathies.
You can read the rest of Lehigh's op-ed and watch him construct a straw man out of "what if" and "let's just say" scenarios. He expresses the greatest concern over Justice Samuel Alito, who not only supported the Dobbs decision but voted against the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized gay marriage. But even Lehigh is forced to concede that it was Alito who added a specific caveat to Dobbs saying that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
The author worries that in some hypothetical appeal where gay marriage was up for a fresh look, Alito would vote to effectively ban it again. And most of the other conservatives on the court could (in theory) join him. But that's the fundamental problem with this scaremongering tactic. It's entirely hypothetical. During a quick search, I was unable to find a single case making its way up the ladder where the legality of gay marriage would be put into question. In order for a challenge to arise, some gay couples would need to be denied a license. Where is that happening today?
I do understand some of the concerns that Alito has raised, however. The Boston Globe treats his dissent in the lesbian woman’s workplace discrimination lawsuit as being not only wrong-headed but probably evil. But the concern remains valid for a couple of reasons. The case served as a prime example of people being judged solely on their personal views and beliefs when it comes to questions involving morality, homosexuality, or any related issue. However, the courts refused to consider that a form of discrimination.
This fits in with a broader trend in the courts involving virtually all instances of protection against discrimination or bias. We have flooded the legal codes with protections against such things, but they are not universal in nature. They should, in theory, apply to everyone equally, but they all list certain protected, politically favored groups and demographics. Racial minorities and those with alternate sexual proclivities are specifically awarded a coat of armor. But there are no protections for white people, heterosexual couples, or those who believe that human beings only have two genders. Advocates may try to claim that those protections apply to everyone, but that is frequently not how it works out in practice.
Returning to the original issue of the impending doom of legalized gay marriage, it's not difficult to see what's going on here. Liberals and moderates who may be considering giving Donald Trump another chance because of how badly Joe Biden has wrecked the country are being given a warning. There's a boogie man around the corner even if you can't see him yet. He'll be coming to steal your abortion pills, rip up your gay marriage certificate, and toss you in jail. And Joe Biden is the only one who can save us. So just go back to eating your $18 Happy Meal, drive your useless electric car, and pull the lever for the Democrats one more time. It's all so obvious to the point of being tedious.
