Over the last couple of weeks, there have been some very interesting decisions made in the US Supreme Court.
DOMA, the law in which defines marriage as a union solely between a man and a woman, was overturned by the Supreme Court. On a local level, this decision deemed California’s Prop 8 unconstitutional as well. Part of me wants to chime in sarcastically, “It’s about damn time!” but really, I do think it’s quite a remarkable accomplishment for our country to have moved so far in the opposite direction of DOMA (1996) in such a short amount of time. Over the last few years, polls have shown more and more people in support of overturning DOMA and this year the majority of American citizens were in favor of it. That’s probably for a variety of reasons – gays are out of the closet and part of our families and circle of friends, they are in our pop-culture, younger adults who have grown up with it not being a taboo, and the realization that same-sex marriage isn’t really interfering with our straight marriages…in fact we do a fabulous job messing those up all on our own as certainly our 50% divorce rate isn’t caused by the gays.
As the 9-year-old son of some very dear friends (who were married when California legalized same-sex marriage and were then in limbo when prop 8 passed) says, “If people don’t like gay marriage then they shouldn’t get gay married.” Exactly!
I was taken back a bit by the Court’s ruling on DOMA because as new rights were being given to one group of people, there was a possibility of rights being taken away from another group based on a controversial decision the day before. SCOTUS found that parts of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional and unnecessary. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law in order to protect the15th Amendment. After the ratification of the 15th Amendment, several states tried various ways to deny the vote to all citizens, mainly African Americans, by imposing literacy tests or taxes and redrawing district lines. The Voting Rights Act prohibits states from denying anyone’s legal right to vote and also allowed the federal government to oversee the offending states’ voting protocol. I say “allowed” because that latter part of the Act was recently ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The VRA has basically been gutted in that even though the heart of the Act is still intact, they’ve removed all basis for enforcing it. In the decision, it was said that the federal oversight was basically outdated and no longer needed. The Justices (5-4) think that things have changed and racism is no longer a problem.
Interestingly enough, four days earlier Food Network star Paula Deen, from Georgia (one of the states under the federal oversight), was fired for poor treatment of her African American staff and for having used racial slurs. It does sound like things have changed, doesn’t it.
I'll not address the 2nd part until a do a bit more reading.
ReplyDeleteI could never see the arguments against gay anything. They made little or no sense as presented. In fact they seemed little more than a collection of sound bites designed to infuriate those who went wild at their clarion. So, once you ripped off the fake, you were left with nothing more than the mindset of those that ran the KKK or any reactionary fascistic movement. And their agenda is control, nothing more nothing less.
Their thoughts are not based on democracy or even republicanism. But they worm their way in to a system at a time when that system is at most stress and then keep the heat under the stress. Since once people actually begin to think, they begin to recover control and that's anathema to these people.
Anyol'woos, I'm delighted.
What has been interesting is that while conservative politicians have been kowtowing to its social/religious conservative base their gay sons and daughters (who want to get married) have shown up on the scene, changing their minds. Politicians on the right have been popping up left and right speaking out against doma. It will be interesting how this will play out in their local and state elections. There are still a load who are in favor of it, but that seems to be moot.
DeleteMind boggling....all of it!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Paula Deen. I've heard contradicting reports on her actions!
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of the conflicting reports have been more about whether she should have been fired or not. And I don't have an opinion on that. On the other hand, she admitted (even in a couple of youtube videos) to her behavior - some quite some time ago and some in recent years. My point being, the majority opinion was that racism is no longer an issue and therefore this part of the Act is no longer needed...and I think all of us can agree that is incorrect.
DeleteOK, I had a bit of a read and far from enough to say I can comment on strong ground.
ReplyDeleteProcedurally, SCOTUS can only respond. So if it doesn't hear argument it cannot take it into account.
In the USA, SCOTUS has the headache of holding three sets of Rights (Citizen, Federal and State, in that order)in it's awareness on any decision. All courts are loath to interfere with the elected Will and will only do so if there is breaches in fundamental Rights.
Here, you are adding an aspect that isn't in the legislation. You are including the Citizen. But the hinge here is Rights between Federal and State, and if there is fundamental breaches sufficient to cause Justifiable interference by the federal level on the State.
The Test, is there systemic active and persistent racism in the activities of the State. In other words is it a version of apartheid South Africa.
On that, for me, and at this distance, I don't believe any of the States are racist, either in the active or more importantly these days passive. Is there nasty scum floating about inside and on the fringes of society, of course. But they will always be there. You just never turn your back on them and never assume they've ever dissipated. They simply reform elsewhere.
Ya know, maybe a better word would be discrimination as it falls very short of apartheid certainly, but it's not over either. If you look at the voter ID laws certain states scrambled to make just before the last year's election. Clearly that was those states' way of keeping a certain population from voting for Obama - they even admitted to it. The VRA kept it from happening, but now, I imagine we'll see those popping up sooner than later. And in that case the discrimination is crossing over into class as well.
DeleteI guess if they had ruled that section of the Act unconstitutional and simply stated the legal reasons for it, that would be one thing. But for Roberts to blatantly say it's a non-issue in this day, well to me that's completely out of touch.
But apartheid 'was' what you had in certain States. It may not have been called that, but that's exactly what it was. That was the oversight the Fed Gov was addressing. And so a non issue in that context perhaps.
DeleteHere though, it needs a Citizen to draw in the federal courts system. In the past it would've been impossible for them to do that. They would and were Statute blocked, where laws were enacted denying them standing. Now they are not.
In that context, that makes sense I guess. But I don't think we can dismiss the part this act has played in that progress. Of course it's not going to to go back to where it was without it in play, but I think we will see some shady goings-on in the near future in places where minorities or the poor are still seen as second-class citizens.
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