Former Employee in Rowan County, Kentucky Kim Davis I am not going to get a hearing from the US Supreme Court. A case against her, filed by multiple same-sex couples whom she refused to grant marriage permits, was dismissed by the country’s highest court on Monday.
But ultra-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas took the opportunity to attack the court’s landmark Obergefell case, which found that the constitution grants same-sex couples the same rights and obligations in marriage as their same-sex counterparts.
Thomas, who has direct access to the White House through his activist and lobbyist Ginni Thomas, proposed the decision and suggested that the case be overturned, as reported by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern.
Why?
“Religious Freedom.”
Thomas claims that Kim Davis “may have been one of the first victims of this court’s reckless treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last.”
His words are devastating and a direct attack on equality.
“Because of Obergefell, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those with sincere religious beliefs about marriage to participate in society without violating Obergefell and its impact on other anti-discrimination laws,” claims Thomas five years after the decision.
“It would be one thing if the recognition of same-sex marriage had been discussed and adopted within the framework of the democratic process, with people choosing not to provide legal protection for religious freedom under state law,” he added. “But it is very different when the Court of Justice imposes this decision on society through the creation of atextual constitutional rights and the indecent interpretation of the free exercise clause and abandons those with religious objections.”
At the time of the Obergefell decision, same-sex marriage was supported by six out of ten Americans.
In the Obergefell 2015 case, Judge Thomas wrote: “The Court of Justice included a right to same-sex marriage in the fourteenth amendment, although this right is nowhere to be found in the text.”
Thomas is a textualist or originalist who adheres to the pseudo-conservative theory developed in the 1980s that the Constitution is not a living document generally written to stand the test of time. Rather, they believe that it must be interpreted as the founders intended, with the words interpreted exactly as the authors of the document intended.
(Textualism, or originalism, has been labeled “fraud” and Thomas was beaten up for “the hypocrisy” surrounding him.)
Several members of the court stated that the court’s decision would jeopardize the religious freedom of many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. If states had been allowed to legislate to resolve this issue, they could have included shelter for those who hold those religious beliefs, ”writes Thomas.
“The court, however, bypassed this democratic process. Worse still, although it was briefly recognized that those with sincere religious objections to same-sex marriage are often “decent and honorable,” “he continues,” the Court further suggested that these beliefs represented a bigoted worldview. “
Believing that LGBTQ people are not the same as non-LGBTQ people is the definition of bigotry.
Justice Thomas used the word “bigot” four times in his dissent, which Justice Samuel Alito followed.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seeks to get Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment through and give the court a conservative 6-3 majority.
Image by Thomas Cizauskas via Flickr and a CC license
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