Friday, June 24, 2022

One Right Safe, For Now



Notwithstanding various iterations the saying has undergone, the late mayor and police chief of Philadelphia Frank Rizzo is credited with arguing "a liberal is a conservative who got mugged the night before."  

That is not universally valid, in part demonstrated by the mercy many victims, or family members of victims, express toward their victimizers. Nonetheless, it still reflects the generally valid notion that views often depend on whose ox is being gored. That seems to apply to the extreme conservative, sexually odd Associate Justice of the nation's High Court. As reported by Politico

Justice Clarence Thomas argued in a concurring opinion released on Friday that the Supreme Court “should reconsider” its past rulings codifying rights to access contraceptives, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.

The sweeping suggestion from the current court’s longest-serving justice came in a concurring opinion he authored in response to the court’s ruling on Friday revoking the constitutional right to an abortion. In his opinion, Thomas wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.

Since last month, when POLITICO published an initial draft majority opinion of the court’s decision on Friday to strike down Roe v. Wade, Democratic politicians have repeatedly warned that such a ruling would lead to the reversal of other landmark privacy-related cases.

In his opinion, Thomas wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.

Justice Clarence Thomas argued in a concurring opinion released on Friday that the Supreme Court “should reconsider” its past rulings codifying rights to access contraceptives, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.

Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. You know what one case in the sexual/gender area is Clarence Thomas is omitting. That would be Loving v. Virginia, in which

A unanimous Court struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

If the Court knocked down Loving v. Virginia, it would imperil the marriage of the black Justice to his white wife, the insurrectionist and ironically named Virginia. His ox, in all likelihood, would be gored.

On the other hand, there are five fingers, also this:



No comments:

The Once, Still, and Future President

Shortly before the tweet below, NBC News noted Foreign leaders have lined up to speak with him. He has rattled Mexico and Canada with threa...