Awesome news!

They also dismissed the case trying to reinstate Proposition 8, but only on the grounds that the supporters didn't have legal standing. I'm not sure how I feel about that one. While I support gay marriage and I don't believe that the State of California has the right to deny equal protection under the law, I wish SCOTUS would have been more clear in that ruling and simply said "equal protection under the law obligates the State of California to not discriminate within their constitution" thereby making a clear stand that discrimination for sexual orientation in marriage will *not* be tolerated.

Did the Supreme Court just realise it was allowed to make judgements? Affirmative action, states voting rights, DOMA... You wait ages for a Supreme Court decision and three arrive at once!

The court schedules decision dates. They *always* group things together. It's called "sessions"

Well, by procedurely dismissing that case, they upheld the lower court ruling, which is that Prop 8 is gone.

Agreed, but it could yet come back before them if people who *do* have legal standing bring it to them. Had they outright said "nope, can't do it, violates equal protection" then it would be said and done, but they pulled their usual "we found a way out that is less controversial!" bull.

It's a dangerous game both ways. A court case has to have a legal team able to argue each side of it. If they don't and you rule anyway, it's a mistrial. Don't worry, the ACLU will find a way to bring it up in one of the numerous other states where there's a ban on gay marriage. California was just the easiest one to find people to contest it.

But SCOTUS can't have a mistrial. There is no means of appeal or declaring a mistrial in the top civil court in the nation. If they make a ruling, it is law until the next court decides to take up a similar case and maybe changes the course unless Congress and the President get with the states and make a specific Constitutional amendment.

The only people that would have standing is the state of California, right?

Should be. I would think the governor and the CA AG would have to take it to SCOTUS.

Yeah, the governor and attorney general, both of whom refused to defend it.

As much as the Supreme Court gets constantly called reactionary or legislating from the court, they needed to make sure they did it clean.

I don't care how or why. I don't care how close it was. I don't care if Scalia was as stupid as he usually is or not. All I know is that I'm really happy about it.

Scalia ruled with the majority on Prop 8

YES! :D

A nice double-whammy of a ruling, on DOMA for the whole nation and Prop 8 for my own California!

A big-time win for gay rights and HUMAN rights.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/mike-huckabee-is-not-a-fan-of-the-doma-decision-jesus-wept-20130626

xD Jesus wept...lol...

I didn't realize Jesus and Huckabee were tight?

Exactly the right way to have done it. The Defense of Marriage Act was obviously unconstitutional from the start. At the same time, the Court did not impose gay marriage on the whole country, which would give us another issue like abortion to drive decades of culture war. Remember that liberal bastions like Oregon and Michigan, to say nothing of Alabama or Kansas, still don't have gay marriage. This decision makes universal gay marriage inevitable but at the same time allows the process to play out organically, with public opinion as the driver rather than federal fiat.

And maybe finally douches like obiwanobiwan or his equivalents on the other side will shut up about what, far from being some human rights crusade or threat to Western civilization, is really a small issue affecting few people that has stolen too much public policy making oxygen for too long.

All this week's decisions have been spot-on.

If Scalia is one thing, bo_sox48, he's not stupid. He's stunningly brilliant and nowhere near the monster ignorant rubes on the left portray him to be. If you've read a single opinion or dissent of his you'd see that. He's not infallible, no one is, but there's no way to not respect his intellect.

Amen, Invictus. GDP shrinks due to the fact that government is overspending while simultaneously spying on American citizens and abusing the power of taxation to suppress political speech at the same time the administration is mishandling world events so that the United States has become an impotent laughing stock whose ambassadors can be murdered at will… OH, LOOK, GAY PEOPLE!!!

Attacks on US Embassies happened quite a bit before the Obama administration, and will continue to happen for quite a bit after the Obama administration.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/09/13/us.embassy.attacks/index.html

Just for a partial list.

Also, Karl Rove admits to having pushed gay marriage to the forefront in several states in 2004 because voting on it was likely to mobilize the GOP base. Using it as a political smokescreen isn't limited to one party.

In what bizzaro world is the GDP shrinking?

I know you basically blasted out the tea party talking points, but c'mon. At least fact check this shit.

I find it hard to be happy that DOMA was struck down. Instead, it saddens me that it took until 2013 to do so.

Also, an (un)healthy dose of racism from SCOTUS tempers the mood considerably as well (but that's another topic)

Are you talking abou tthe UT-Austin decision? The court affirmed the pricipal of affirmative action but told UT the program *must* be tailored to a specific goal and that they need to rework it, not scrap it completely. But knowing you, I can see how you view fair competition between minority races and whites as being racist and don't realize the the racism and injustice not only to the whites but also to the minorities as programs like UT-Austin imply they can't do it on their own.

Or did you mean section 4 of the voting rights act which needed to be revised 50 years on.

Say what you will about a need for revision Draug, but you know as well as everyone else that it's going to result in inherently racist voting legislation.

All the Supreme Court did was strike down the preclearance system which was based off of 40 year old voting patterns. Everything that was illegal under the act remains illegal today, it's just that Alaska (!) doesn't have to ask Washington, DC for permission to move polling centers, for example. And there is nothing to stop Congress from enacting a new system of preclearance based off of recent election figures. After all, it makes little sense for New Hampshire to have to ask Washington for permission to change its laws while, say, Arkansas doesn't need to, and for some little counties in Colorado to need permission while Cook County's Daley Machine blatantly keeps Latinos from having their full share of voting power due to all manner of tricks.

It's easy to scream racist, but if you just scratch the surface of the ruling you find that nothing of the sort is true. Hell, the only really conservative opinion was Thomas', since he's the only one who would have struck down preclearance altogether.

"And maybe finally douches like obiwanobiwan or his equivalents on the other side will shut up about what, far from being some human rights crusade or threat to Western civilization, is really a small issue affecting few people that has stolen too much public policy making oxygen for too long."

Don't bet on it, Invictus--

I and like-minded folks won't shut up (and really, why should we HAVE to?) until there is not gay marriage but simply MARRIAGE, plain and simple and universally-respected, in each and every last state in this union...and then onto every last corner of the earth where this "small" portion of the population is being oppressed by religious fanatics or social tyranny.

And those same fanatics and douches on the other side won't rest until every last state bans gay marriage and instills and abortion and takes us back to that Golden Age Christianized American Utopia which, of course, never actually existed and which was actually a pretty hellish time if you weren't a straight white male of at least decent social standing.

So sorry--a great victory, but it's merely that, and not the Super Bowl victory at the end of it all with (appropriately enough) Freddie Mercury's voice singing "We Are the Champions."

"If Scalia is one thing, bo_sox48, he's not stupid. He's stunningly brilliant and nowhere near the monster ignorant rubes on the left portray him to be."

I agree, Invictus--mostly.

I think Justice Scalia is a BRILLIANT man...and without a doubt the single most infuriating and, from my perspective, the single most narrow-minded justice on the Supreme Court. I hate the way he views the Constitution, and I hate the absurd extent to which he takes his overly-conservative (which I mean more in the traditional sense of the term more than the political sense, though both might apply) approach to the document.

That being said, many on the Right probably can't stand the sarcasm of Ginsberg or the relative-activism of Sotomayor and Kagan, whom I obviously like...

So it all shakes out. :)

(Out of curiosity--who else thinks of the Three Branches the SC is probably the most popular right now? I'd have to think their "approval rating" even before this would be pretty high, they're generally effective and often fair, and actually get things done and talk things over and come to a decision in the end rather than endlessly kick the can down the road...well, sometimes they do that, but at present I still think they're probably the most effective branch.)

That being said, not happy about the Voting Rights Act being hit as it was...

But for another day--you win some with the SC, and you lose some.

"I and like-minded folks won't shut up (and really, why should we HAVE to?) until there is not gay marriage but simply MARRIAGE, plain and simple and universally-respected, in each and every last state in this union...and then onto every last corner of the earth where this "small" portion of the population is being oppressed by religious fanatics or social tyranny."


First off, it is a small group of people. The fact that there aren't many gay people shouldn't be a controverisal thing to put in scare quotes. Are a lot of things still unfair? Yeah, but people in states with gay marriage already just achieved complete victory, and by the decade is out every state will probably have it, and will achieve it through the democratic process, which means no complaints or opposition or serious attempts at reversal once it happens. So it's all over but for the crying. It is the Super Bowl, or at least a grand slam in game four of the World Series. As for trying to get it to happen all over the world, there are places it will never happen. Saudi Arabia still executes homosexuals, after all.

Once this dumb sideshow issue is settled we can get on with things that actually matter (like, oh I don't know, closing our trillion dollar deficit, saving entitlements from their certain collapse ten or so years down the line, reforming the byzantine tax code, having wages start to rise after a long period of stagnation, dealing with the inevitable higher education bubble burst, etc etc etc; you know, things a government actually ought to spend huge amounts of time on), rather such a relatively minor issue like gay marriage. It's settled. You won. If all gay pressure groups folded up tent tomorrow gay marriage would still become a reality shortly just because of the attitude of the new generation of voters. Let's focus our give-a-damn on the serious problems now, please.

"...and by the decade is out every state will probably have it..."

Do not overestimate the discriminatory power of the Indiana legislature (House Joint Resolution 6). We have a pretty long track record in the area of discrimination.

The resolution is on pace to pass both the House and Senate again, meaning it will be on the ballot in 2014. I would not be surprised at all if it's close, and if it's close, as we've learned in local elections lately, just about anything may happen.

Keep in mind that this is an amendment to the state constitution. I don't know how it is where you live, but it'll be more than 10 years before there's enough support to overturn that around here.

"First off, it is a small group of people. The fact that there aren't many gay people shouldn't be a controverisal thing to put in scare quotes."

First off, a small group doesn't equate to a group that is OK to ignore or have treated as second-class citizens.

Second off-- http://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2011/04/06/how-many-lgbts-live-america

By contrast, there are 6-8 million or so Jews in America, I believe...

Are you willing to suggest that if Jewish marriages were banned in state after state and Jews were made to feel like second-class citizens you'd be OK passing that off as, well, it's only "a small group of people" after all, right?

"Once this dumb sideshow issue is settled we can get on with things that actually matter (like, oh I don't know, closing our trillion dollar deficit, saving entitlements from their certain collapse ten or so years down the line, reforming the byzantine tax code, having wages start to rise after a long period of stagnation, dealing with the inevitable higher education bubble burst, etc etc etc; you know, things a government actually ought to spend huge amounts of time on),"

All of those things are tremendously important.

But so are civil rights, which is what this amounts to.

The LGBT movement is this generations Civil Rights Movement--not as large in scope and magnitude, maybe, but the comparisons are there and have been made again and again...

So this is a very important issue too, sir--not more important than the issues you raise, but AS important, as what use is solving all of those issues and rectifying the frame and support of the state if it isn't a state that protects the principles and rights of all of the people who are to be effected by that frame?

I never said it was OK to ignore gays or treat them as second-class citizens. I only said there were relatively few of them and that we should therefore keep this issue in perspective. You're treating me like an opponent of gay marriage which I'm not. I'm just not a Kool-Aid drunken cultist like you. What a monstrous strawman. As for the Jew angle, shame on you. Really dude, that's an awful, dirty little trick.


"what use is solving all of those issues and rectifying the frame and support of the state if it isn't a state that protects the principles and rights of all of the people who are to be effected by that frame?"

What use are titanic arguments over what, in our post-civil union world and now post-DOMA world, amounts to gay couples getting certain tax breaks if the country as a whole barrels off a cliff? Going forward we need to focus on those issues that effect every American directly, and just leave gay marriage as settled where it exists and inevitable where it doesn't.

One thing that's clear about this week's DOMA decision (and which few are bothering to deny) is that, legally, it's one of the worst-written and -reasoned decisions in recent SCOTUS history (last 50 years or so). It is completely opaque what standard they actually used to find the law unconstitutional.

I'm not saying that will be a big concern to those who just wanted DOMA gone, and don't care how; but I think it should concern those who care about the state of US constitutional law.

Given that the SCOTUS completely failed to say just why DOMA is unconstitutional, I'm curious, Invictus -- why do YOU say it was clearly unconstitutional from the start?

http://puu.sh/3qAYh.png