Dominion Tantrums
There is no doubt that the Supreme Court ruling on June 26th,
2015 was a monumental day for America.
It finally answered the question that was two decades in the making, and
it toppled a mindset that was centuries old.
As a functional libertarian, I consider the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v.
Hodges
regarding same-sex marriages to be the right decision. Not that it benefits me in any way, because
it doesn’t, but in terms of it being a matter of individual freedom pertaining
to consenting adults, it was the right decision to make.
And I’m proud to know that the public by-in-large has become more
welcoming of same-sex couples than they were even twenty years ago, when this
issue began to seriously manifest on the national scene.
But at the same time, I am ashamed at the outcome. Not because of the majority opinion, mind
you. But because of how the justices in
the minority behaved themselves on this matter.
One would expect the justices, even in defeat, to have some measure of
decorum. To be able to recognize their
opinions to be in the minority and yet remain cordial. After all, even the minority opinion carries
some weight in future discussions. And
sometimes, in a few rare circumstances, the justices make future decisions that
reverse those of their predecessors.
But what came from the writings of those in the minority opinion for
this case can be likened to those of petulant children being told they can’t
have their way anymore.
Justice Antonin Scalia, the self-professed constitutional scholar, whined
about how “Today’s decree says that
my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority
of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”
I’m waiting for him to hold
his breath until he turns blue and then we’ll all be sorry.
Your “ruler”, sir? Your “ruler” is the Constitution! Article VI, second paragraph, “supreme Law of
the Land” ring any bells?
Scalia
pompously argued that the issue of same-sex marriages was supposedly settled
back when the Fourteenth Amendment was supposedly ratified.
This
is what he said: “When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868,
every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the
constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases.”
So
according to his own rationality that you just read, there supposedly was a
narrow time period to decide what should and should not be covered under the
Fourteenth Amendment, and when nobody spoke up back in the 19th
century, during a period of rampant and unchecked fundamentalism, that
supposedly “resolved” this issue now and forevermore.
What
a piece of self-serving excrement from a self-righteous flatulating sphincter muscle!
Even the Koch-owned Reason Foundation is
questioning Scalia’s supposed stance as a “constitutional
scholar”, to which I ask what the hell took them so long.
I
would dare suspect that Justice Scalia, much like others of his ilk, are only
as much of a “constitutional scholar” when it serves to validate his own
interpretations. And when the two differ,
then he claims to channel “original intent” or “literal interpretation” like he
was some cheap black-robed carnival medium.
How
appropriate, then, that Scalia would project his own faults onto others with
this passage from his dissenting tantrum: “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
here my own fortune cookie says “Pompous jackass knows no
faults, especially his own.”
Oh, and my winning numbers are 6, 26, 20, and 15.
But
perhaps the most disgusting and embarrassing part of the dissent came from
Chief Justice John Roberts. If you
thought that Scalia’s tantrums were petty and self-serving, check this out:
“If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who
favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision.
Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a
new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new
benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
With all due respect for the office, Chief Justice Roberts, you, sir,
are not only wrong, but you are an ignorant and arrogant jackass, and an embarrassment
to those of us who understand and defend the proper role of the judiciary in
America.
The Constitution had everything to do with the victory you tried to
deny, sir! Everything! Article IV, section 2, talking about how “the Citizens of each state shall be entitled to
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Article VI, declaring the Constitution to be
the “supreme Law of the Land”. And, of course, the Fourteenth Amendment,
which prevents the states from denying those same citizens to the “Privileges
and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” from Article IV. An Amendment, I must point out, that was ratified
because there were states that did just that in the name of slavery... a.k.a. “protecting
our way of life”.
And who are you, sir... who are you... to declare that a state can
somehow override the Constitution and its amendments in one instance but not in
others?
Of
course, we know who Justice Scalia’s supposed “Ruler” really is, right? God!
Or “God” as defined by his personal interpretation and personal beliefs
and then imposed through the force of almighty government.
Because
let’s get brutally honest here... what really got overturned with this decision
wasn’t just a ban on same-sex marriages or a ban on recognizing same-sex
marriages. What really got overturned
was dominionism. The pompous, self-centered,
self-righteous, self-serving mindset that decrees that the whole world must be forced
to reflect the dominant religious mindset of Scalia and those of his ilk.
In
short, dominionism says that a certain group is empowered by God to impose their
will and their way of thinking into everything they see and everything they
survey. And that their will and their
way of thinking is to override and supersede all other thoughts, including overriding
the very tenants of freedom we supposedly cherish and that we take for granted
on a continual basis.
You
see, according to dominionist thinking, the United States Constitution is
not... I repeat, not... the “supreme Law of the Land”. It is the dominionist’s personal religious
beliefs that supposedly serve as the last and final word on everything. Their beliefs and their will supposedly
overrule everything else.
Sound
familiar? It should. It’s the same mindset used by the Islamic State,
and Bocco Haram, and the Taliban. Only our
dominionists did it before theirs were even born. And our people don’t use a bomb and a gun to
impose their will, because they have long enjoyed using the power of
government.
It
is dominionist thinking based on self-serving religious beliefs that kept
same-sex marriages illegal. It is dominionist
thinking that justified and supported outdated sodomy laws even when the rest
of the world ignored them. It is
dominionist mindsets that used fear and hate to shove the fraudulently-named “Defense
of Marriage Act” through Congress two decades ago on the mere rumor that California
would legalize same-sex marriages. (Turned out it would happen in Massachusetts first.) The same fear and hate that was used for
states to pass their own bans on legalizing or recognizing same-sex marriages
in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The same fear and hate that is being used to this very day to rush
through fraudulently-named “Religious Freedom” legislation in order to
supposedly “protect” what is left of dominionist thinking in society.
And it is dominionist thinking that you hear being mourned by the
self-righteous “champions of the family”.
Dominionist thinking that says that the courts supposedly have “no authority”
to change what they have pompously declared to be the final word on what
constitutes a marriage. Even though
marriage as an institution was traditionally considered a business and
political negotiation. Even though
marriage traditionally treated women as a commodity to be possessed and
bartered. Even though there was
supposedly no such thing as annulments or divorce in a truly traditional
marriage. It was traditionally for
life. Your life, not just the life of
your spouse. Where was the talk of
tradition when some of these dominionists walked down the isle for a second or
a third or a fourth time?
Oh, right, I forgot, this is “not about them” is it? It’s about one social institution dictating
what another institution should and should not be.
Of course this is not the end of the legal issue or of the battle. This is just the beginning. Dominionist refuse to recognize that they
have lost. They’ve already started to
fight back on the local level, trying to reassert their arrogant and
self-serving beliefs in defiance of the very Constitution that they claim to
cherish. Local government officials are refusing
to do their duties, pompously believing that their personal and individual beliefs
override the very laws they swore on their own bibles to protect and defend. And the only way they will comprehend that reality
will be if they are stripped of their cushy positions and made to realize that
the world has not nor will it come to an end simply because they’re not the
center of it.
The so-called “great and glorious institution of marriage” survived
poor people marrying for reasons other than for politics or commerce. It survived couples of mixed religions
marrying, to which I would have otherwise never been born. It survived couples of mixed races marrying,
to which Justice Clarence Thomas and President Barack Obama would have
otherwise never been born. It survived
the multiple marriages and divorces of Rush Limbaugh, Marilyn Monroe, Dennis
Rodman, Newt Gingrich, Britney Spears, and even Kim Kardashian. It will survive Adam and Steve being
recognized as a married couple. It is the
dominionist thinking that has latched on to this institution like the parasite
that it is that should and needs to perish.
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