COMMENTS: Too many good ones on both of these articles to even begin to pick from them!
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Antonin Scalia Dissent In Marriage Equality Case Is Even More Unhinged Than You'd Think
By Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney, June 26, 2015
Justice Antonin Scalia has really had it.
Scalia's dissent in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which officially made marriage equality the law of the land, runs for eight pages, but amounts largely to a big, arms-crossed "harumph."
"I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy," he begins.
"The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me," he offers. "It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast [Huh? Geez, "the Ruler"? BS!--Ed.], is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best."
"But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law," he opines. "Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its 'reasoned judgment,' thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect."
Scalia even offered what may be the first legal citation of a hippie.
"'The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality,'" he quoted from the majority opinion before adding, "Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie."
HuffPost went to look for the first hippie we could find, per Scalia's instructions. Neil Cousins, a 61-year-old man from Alexandria protesting nuclear weapons outside the White House, said he had come to this very park in the 1970s for pot smoke-ins, but added that there really haven't been hippies around since the Grateful Dead stopped touring. He was nonetheless willing to offer a judgment on Scalia's assertion that marriage abridges rather than expands intimacy. "I've known it to have both reactions," he ruled. "Scalia is a big knucklehead."
In Scalia's dissent, he also bemoaned the tone of the majority opinion.
"The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic," he writes. "If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. [So, do it (and make it an airtight bag)!--Ed.] The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie."
"And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation," he writes. "But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch."
Each of the four opponents of the ruling wrote their own dissent but Scalia, opposing for every reason anybody could come up with, joined the three he didn't write.
Here are the most delightfully cranky lines from his Obamacare -- or, in his christening, SCOTUSCare -- dissent from Thursday.
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We Can't Even With The Irony Of Clarence Thomas's Marriage Equality Dissent
By Zeba Blay, June 26, 2015
Today is a beautiful day.
It's a day of progress and celebration for those who have fought for and supported marriage equality in the United States. The Supreme Court ruling signifies a brief, shining moment of solidarity and joy. I don't want to ruin this moment. But we need to talk about Clarence Thomas.
More specifically, we need to talk about Clarence Thomas's dissent. It's unsurprising that the notoriously conservative Justice Thomas voted against marriage equality -- his track record when it comes to this issue has been consistently closed-minded. But the arguments made in his same-sex marriage dissent have reached new, terrifying heights of absurdity (and this is a man who once argued that the NBA is proof that racial imbalances aren't always a bad thing). That absurdity needs to be acknowledged.
In one horrifyingly obtuse paragraph, Justice Thomas demonstrates his simplistic concept of oppression. He writes:
"The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away."Human dignity cannot be taken away by the government? Really? Slaves, who were lawfully stripped of their culture and religion, taught that they were inferior to whites and not even fully human, forced into lives of servitude, abuse, rape, mental and emotional anguish, were not robbed of their basic human dignity? Really?
Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman -- something that would have been illegal today if it weren't for the Supreme Court's historic Loving v. Virginia ruling which deemed discrimination against interracial marriage as unconstitutional. It's dangerous to equate too heavily the black civil rights struggles with those of the LGBT community, but the irony here is still profound. Does Thomas see his marriage as a mere government benefit? If the law of the land stated that he and his wife couldn't be married, simply because he is black, would his dignity truly remain intact? Would he have no sense of injustice?
At the end of the day, Thomas's dignity argument is wholly irrelevant [As is Thomas himself, unfortunately--Ed.]. The dignity of slaves doesn't absolve the United States of its sins. The dignity of Japanese Americans held in internment camps didn't make the discrimination any less real. This idea that maintaining one's dignity makes oppression, marginalization, and the denial of basic human rights okay is beyond ridiculous.
If Clarence Thomas is against marriage equality, so be it: there's nothing he can do about it anyway. But the fact that a Supreme Court Justice could use this reasoning as justification for his decision? That's downright undignified.
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