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Everything happened yesterday, didn’t it? Kind of like all the news got crammed into a single day: the SOTUS marriage ruling; the shooting of Richard Matt; the masse slaughter in Sousse; Greece on the verge of default; Obama’s eulogy in Charleston.
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Obama is always at his best when he speaks about race. One gets the sense that he’s writing his own material.
I can no more disown {Reverend Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community, he said at a speech in Philadelphia in 2008. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These were the most honest words about race that I’d ever heard come out of the mouth of a politician. Risky words, too: They could easily have blown up in his face. They sure sold his candidacy to me: I voted for him.
Imagine my surprise when he turned into the most secretive and clandestine President since Richard Nixon.
But he made another great speech yesterday:
By recognizing our common humanity, by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American – by doing that, we express God’s grace.
Shades of the note he left on the Wailing Wall: Lord… make me an instrument of your will.
###
Of course, the SOTUS decision yesterday was the right decision. Marriage equality is a civil rights issue because it speaks to equal opportunities and equal protections under the law. As such, this is one of those situations in which, even though I'm a strong states rights supporter, I think the federal government had an obligation to intervene in the name of the greater moral good.
Few random thoughts:
• Finally, we can get rid of that icky adjective “same-sex”!
• Andrew Sullivan, the noted blogger who wrote one of the very first defenses of same-sex marriage for The New York Times back in 1989, had one of the more interesting reactions to the court decision:
“What do gay men have in common when they don’t have oppression?” he wondered. (Note that he didn’t even bother to phrase the question in terms of “gay people.”)
It’s a good question.
• Scalia, Alito, and Thomas are unmitigated assholes, but I had to giggle a bit at Roberts’ dissent. What a sly fox he is! I suppose he needed to keep his conservative credentials bright and shiny after going over to the Dark Side with that deciding vote on the Affordable Care Act.
Roberts’ dissent was the classic conservative argument that didn’t seek to judge whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong – he acknowledges the power of love – but, rather, looked to Madison and the other Federalists, examining the essential nature of State versus Federal authority, It’s a legitimate dissent, in other words, unlike Scalia and Thomas’s outraged rants. It could just as easily have been written as a dissent in Loving v. Virginia. Roberts noted that the Constitution never mentions marriage, and that, therefore, marriage equality is not a question for a federal court to decide.
But his contention that the Court was overstepping in attempting to shape social policy was something of a joke given that he made exactly the opposite argument in the Affordable Care Act decision released yesterday.
I suspect Roberts saw this a safe dissent since it was widely anticipated that Kennedy would side with the more liberal members of the Court on this one.
I also suspect that Roberts will quickly find a same-sex wedding to preside over, just to show there are no hard feelings.
• The ever-interesting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sulphuroxide presents an interesting analysis in which he argues that marriage equality is inevitable when sex is uncoupled from baby-making. (His LJ is friends-only so you won’t be able to read it there.) Essentially he’s arguing that the heterosexual family is no longer a viable unit in the economic production chain in industrialized countries, so there are no any longer social pressures to preserve it.
• On that last… It’s been interesting to read some of the thoughts of strong supporters of same-sex marriage who want the line to be drawn there. As though the logic behind this SCOTUS decision couldn’t just as easily apply to marriage between more than two people.
I dunno whether group marriage becomes the Next Big Battle. The polyamory community would have to start producing more talk show hosts.
Still. It’s always edifying to see how inflexible people can be when they're contemplating moral issues outside their own sphere of self-interest.
###
Obama is always at his best when he speaks about race. One gets the sense that he’s writing his own material.
I can no more disown {Reverend Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community, he said at a speech in Philadelphia in 2008. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These were the most honest words about race that I’d ever heard come out of the mouth of a politician. Risky words, too: They could easily have blown up in his face. They sure sold his candidacy to me: I voted for him.
Imagine my surprise when he turned into the most secretive and clandestine President since Richard Nixon.
But he made another great speech yesterday:
By recognizing our common humanity, by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American – by doing that, we express God’s grace.
Shades of the note he left on the Wailing Wall: Lord… make me an instrument of your will.
###
Of course, the SOTUS decision yesterday was the right decision. Marriage equality is a civil rights issue because it speaks to equal opportunities and equal protections under the law. As such, this is one of those situations in which, even though I'm a strong states rights supporter, I think the federal government had an obligation to intervene in the name of the greater moral good.
Few random thoughts:
• Finally, we can get rid of that icky adjective “same-sex”!
• Andrew Sullivan, the noted blogger who wrote one of the very first defenses of same-sex marriage for The New York Times back in 1989, had one of the more interesting reactions to the court decision:
“What do gay men have in common when they don’t have oppression?” he wondered. (Note that he didn’t even bother to phrase the question in terms of “gay people.”)
It’s a good question.
• Scalia, Alito, and Thomas are unmitigated assholes, but I had to giggle a bit at Roberts’ dissent. What a sly fox he is! I suppose he needed to keep his conservative credentials bright and shiny after going over to the Dark Side with that deciding vote on the Affordable Care Act.
Roberts’ dissent was the classic conservative argument that didn’t seek to judge whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong – he acknowledges the power of love – but, rather, looked to Madison and the other Federalists, examining the essential nature of State versus Federal authority, It’s a legitimate dissent, in other words, unlike Scalia and Thomas’s outraged rants. It could just as easily have been written as a dissent in Loving v. Virginia. Roberts noted that the Constitution never mentions marriage, and that, therefore, marriage equality is not a question for a federal court to decide.
But his contention that the Court was overstepping in attempting to shape social policy was something of a joke given that he made exactly the opposite argument in the Affordable Care Act decision released yesterday.
I suspect Roberts saw this a safe dissent since it was widely anticipated that Kennedy would side with the more liberal members of the Court on this one.
I also suspect that Roberts will quickly find a same-sex wedding to preside over, just to show there are no hard feelings.
• The ever-interesting
sulphuroxide presents an interesting analysis in which he argues that marriage equality is inevitable when sex is uncoupled from baby-making. (His LJ is friends-only so you won’t be able to read it there.) Essentially he’s arguing that the heterosexual family is no longer a viable unit in the economic production chain in industrialized countries, so there are no any longer social pressures to preserve it.• On that last… It’s been interesting to read some of the thoughts of strong supporters of same-sex marriage who want the line to be drawn there. As though the logic behind this SCOTUS decision couldn’t just as easily apply to marriage between more than two people.
I dunno whether group marriage becomes the Next Big Battle. The polyamory community would have to start producing more talk show hosts.
Still. It’s always edifying to see how inflexible people can be when they're contemplating moral issues outside their own sphere of self-interest.
