Supreme Court To Hear Landmark Gay Rights Cases

DOMA might be the most fundamental government-sanctioned violation of civil rights since Jim Crow. This overtly unconstitutional fundamentalist Christian act was passed by an overwhelmingly Republican-dominated Congress (with a lone, openly-gay Republican voting against) in 1996 and, sadly, signed by President Clinton. It allowed the federal government to deny rights and privileges freely given to opposite sex marriages throughout the union. This incredible abuse of power by the craven and homophobic Republicans has been under assault since its inception. It has been declared unconstitutional in eight federal courts, including the First and Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

This combination of challenges may finally rid the United States of the irrational and baseless fear of same sex marriage. It has never been the government’s place to enforce what is an entirely religious construct of marriage upon the American people.

While I hopeful that the Supremes will come down on the side of decency and justice, there is always the chance that serial freedom rapists like Antonin Scalia might poison the court against the cause for equal rights. While making comments about his new book at the American Enterprise Institute this October, Scalia unleashed the following verbal salvo concerning the legal basis for disallowing basic human rights:

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. (Blocking) Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.”

Scalia’s rank stupidity in uttering these inflammatory and intellectually-dishonest lines shocks even those who know his legal degree isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Following this 3rd grader logic, then African-Americans should still only count as 3/5ths of a person and women should not be able to vote. The wrongs of the past enshrined in law, particularly violations of a long-standing nature, are not made valid acts simply because the bigotry that supported them was allowed to survive for so long. If anything, such wrongs, because they have stood so long, need to be unequivocally stuck down, in recognition of the great dishonor and harm such improper regulations have done to American citizens.

The Constitution is a living, breathing document. The Framers were not all-powerful, all-seeing demigods unable to make mistakes or miss important (or, at the time, considered inconsequential or irrelevant) points on civil liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The challenge of all thinking, freedom-loving peoples is to eternally re-evaluate the status of human rights in the world and work tirelessly to purge deep-seated and irrational prejudices from the ranks of our laws and depths of our hearts. To not pursue the increase of human freedom and liberty is to actively, and maliciously, insure the destruction of those hallowed principals.