By: D’Anne Witkowski*/Special to TRT—
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts
We were gathered to celebrate something that many of us didn’t think would happen in our lifetimes. Marriage Equality is, at long last, the law of the land. Thank you Supreme Court Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, and Elena Kagan.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts, on the other hand, are pissed. Their dissenting opinions in the case make clear that they think that same-sex couples should not be allowed to get married and that they have the utmost disdain for both same-sex couples and the Justices who voted in the majority. [pullquote]Their dissenting opinions in the case make clear that they think that same-sex couples should not be allowed to get married and that they have the utmost disdain for both same-sex couples and the Justices who voted in the majority.[/pullquote]
Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, doesn’t see same sex couples as people, exactly, more like hypothetical entities that exist solely to be the fodder of debate.
“Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens — through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today,” he wrote. “Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.”
As if those folks who think gays are going to hell and are ruining marriage for everyone would have been appeased by this ruling coming from somewhere else. Haters gonna hate.
Roberts continues, “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. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs. [pullquote]Keep in mind this is not work that Roberts has never had to do in his male, white, heterosexual life. But he knows best what’s good for the gays![/pullquote]
In other words, anti-gay folks just needed a wee bit more convincing and I’m sure they would have been just fine with the whole thing. They just needed more time. And now the very important and not at all demeaning work of convincing everyone we come across that we, as gays and lesbians, are real people who feel real people feelings and aren’t a bunch of child-recruiting perverts has been stolen from us! This is an outrage!
Keep in mind this is not work that Roberts has never had to do in his male, white, heterosexual life. But he knows best what’s good for the gays!
Antonin Scalia was also upset that “the people” don’t get to vote on whether gays are capable of love and commitment or not. [pullquote]Clarence Thomas essentially said that since gays didn’t have it as bad as slaves or people in internment camps, they had nothing to complain about in the first place and should STFU.[/pullquote]
“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 wrote.
If Scalia saw gays and lesbians as actual human beings, he’d likely (but who knows, it’s Scalia) not be so quick to throw them to the wolves—er, I mean, the voting public—to sort it out.
Clarence Thomas essentially said that since gays didn’t have it as bad as slaves or people in internment camps, they had nothing to complain about in the first place and should STFU. [pullquote]Ah, nobody wants to be called a bigot these days, but they do want the freedom to be bigoted. It’s funny how that works. But it’s not funny coming from members of the Supreme Court who have made certain that they will go down in history as bigots themselves.[/pullquote]
Samuel Alito bemoaned that people who think gays are icky would be reduced to “whisper[ing] their thoughts in the recesses of their homes” lest they “risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.”
Ah, nobody wants to be called a bigot these days, but they do want the freedom to be bigoted. It’s funny how that works. But it’s not funny coming from members of the Supreme Court who have made certain that they will go down in history as bigots themselves.
*D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world she reviews rock and roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister and teaches writing at the University of Michigan.
