The Erickson Report for October 28 to November 10, Page 3: LGBTQ rights again at risk

The Erickson Report for October 28 to November 10, Page 3: LGBTQ rights again at risk

Something we thought or at least should have been able to think was over and done with may again be in the line of fire: same-sex marriage.

The right wing bigots have never gotten over their fury at being on the losing side of history and still dream of undoing the historic gain of Obergefell v Hodges, the landmark 2015 case that found marriage equality to be a constitutional right.

Which is why Justices Clarabell Thomas and Sam the Sham Alito grabbed an opportunity to pretty much call for Obergefell to be overturned and invite challenges to it.

The occasion was the Supreme Court refusing to hear an appeal in the case of Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who got national attention by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, claiming it violated her religion.

The Twisted Two agreed with the decision to decline the appeal, but took time to out to call Davis "one of the first victims" of the court's "cavalier treatment of religion" in the Obergefell decision but claimed "she will not be the last."

They wrote Obergefell "enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss."

The "petition provides a stark reminder of the consequences of Obergefell," they intoned.

First of all, those people are bigots and I recall an old saying that "calling things by their right names is the beginning of wisdom." And - here's something interesting for you - thirty years ago, in the case Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment's protection of the "free exercise" of religion does not allow a person to use a religious motivation as a reason not to obey generally applicable laws - such as, I would say, laws against discrimination. Quoting Antonin Skeletor, who wrote the decision, "To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."

But that case involved the used of hallucinogenic peyote in Native American religious ceremonies and the right wing doesn't give a damn about Native American religion. Obergefell, on the other hand, was about something the right wing does care about: Their "religious freedom" to be bigots even in their official duties and commercial enterprises. Besides, as has long been established, intellectual or ethical consistency means nothing to them.

Which is illustrated by the fact that the Twisted Two declared that by recognizing the right to marriage equality, "the Court has created a problem that only it can fix. Until then, Obergefell will continue to have 'ruinous consequences for religious liberty.'"

Which Steve Vladeck, a CNN legal analyst and University of Texas law school professor, accurately called "a telling and ominous message."

According to Tim Holbrook, a professor at Emory University School of Law, Clarabell and Sam The Sham have sent "a signal to state legislatures to challenge Obergefell on religious liberty grounds." In an op-ed at CNN, he warned that "Such efforts could be successful."

This doesn't mean, Holbrook said, that marriage equality would be overruled. Which it quite possibly wouldn't; the reactionaries are too clever for that. Instead, look for the reactionary courts to keep carving out religious liberty exceptions to marriage equality, plus chipping away at attendant rights, like adoption and allowing same-sex couples to be named as parents on birth certificates - in other words, doing to marriage equality the same thing they've been doing to abortion rights, leaving the form intact while removing all the substance.

Worse, this comes at a time when Amy Bugs Bunny Barrett - who served for nearly three years on the board of the private Christian Trinity Schools run by a church of which she is part that openly discriminated against LGBTQ folks, even to the point of barring admission to children of same-sex parents - it comes at a time when she has created a 6-3 reactionary majority on the Supreme Court.

It also comes at a time when a peer-reviewed study released a month ago showed that LGBTQ people are nearly four times more likely to to be a victim of violent crimes than their heterosexual, cisgender counterparts.

The study, by The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, was based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, data which wasn't released until 2019 and not even gathered until 2016.

There is one light in all this darkness: Pope Francis has restated his support for same-sex civil unions.

"Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God," he said in an interview. "What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered."

What's important here is that it's the first time he's done it as pope. The difference between saying it as a bishop, as he had, and saying it as pope, a role which requires him to be more careful in his language, is significant.

Which is also why I forgive him for saying "civil union" and not "marriage." The Catholic Church regards marriage as a sacrament, and calling for the sort of doctrinal change that Catholic marriage would entail was just too far to expect him to go.

We can entertain the notion that this will cause some right wingers, at least Catholic right wingers, to rethink their persistent denial of the reality same sex marriage since marriage in US law is a civil matter, not a religious ceremony, but I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Anyway, as a footnote to all this, relating to the typical cowardice of the bigots when called out on their bigotry: When AP asked Trinity Schools about its anti-LGBTQ policies, the answer was, quoting, "Trinity Schools does not unlawfully discriminate with respect to race, color, gender, national origin, age, disability, or other legally protected classifications under applicable law, with respect to the administration of its programs."

Um, that's not what you were asked. That's like being accused of robbing a store in Detroit and responding "I never robbed any store anywhere in Wisconsin."