Equality, Yes or No?

Q: What stops a state from putting a referendum on the ballot which, if passed, would alter the state constitution to prohibit interracial marriage?

A: The courts. Such legislation would be ruled unconstitutional, in clear violation of our bedrock principle of equality.

Q: What stops a state from putting a referendum on the ballot which, if passed, would prohibit same-sex marriage?

A: Nothing. It is not clear that our courts recognize gay and lesbian Americans as human beings.


Until our "justice" system gets this equality no-brainer right, perhaps we should refrain from recognizing certain Judges as human. Or at least, as people who can apply logic and common sense to the administration of justice without prejudice, superstition or hypocrisy.

Attempts to prohibit interracial marriage in the nineteenth century seem grotesquely absurd today. And a century from now, people will view current attempts to prohibit gay marriage the same way.

Those who contend that marriage is fixed and unchanging haven't studied history. For centuries, in many parts of the world, marriages were arranged and had nothing to do with romantic love as we have come to define it and cherish it in the West. Many societies were built around polygamy, and some still encourage plural marriage today. In present-day Bhutan, not only may a man take more than one wife, but a woman may take more than one husband. Even in America, thousands of plural marriages hide in plain sight.

During some periods of history, middle-aged men married teenage women because teenage men, as a general rule, could not afford to support a family. In other periods, it was commonplace for thirteen and fourteen year-olds to marry each other. And so on.

The nature, format and definition of marriage have been in constant flux since the beginning of recorded history. Those who want to deny this fact are wasting their time, and the future will prove them wrong when it comes to same-sex marriage as well. They may be aided by our current Supreme Court, stuffed by George W. Bush with ideological activists diguised as judges. But eventually, if America and the Constitution stand for anything, they stand for liberty. And thus, trying to prohibit same sex marriage is about as unequal and un-American as you can get.

- JT Compton
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Anton Scalia, Supreme Court (In)Justice

The recent Supreme Court decision affirming Indiana’s right to require its voters to buy burdensome government ID’s was a slap in the face of court precedent, going squarely against the spirit of prior voting rights decisions. It used to be that the Supreme Court protected citizens (in this case, the poor, mostly minorities) from those who wanted to shut them out of the polls (in this case, Republicans) and keep them from voting for the opposition (in this case, Democrats).

By contrast, the Supreme Court had no problem handing the Presidency to George Bush in 2000 on an election technicality, favoring his individual claim over those of the Florida election system and the majority of voters.

To summarize the court's positions:

In 2000, protect the individual from the state.
In 2008, protect the state from the individual.

When asked about this glaring and blatant contradiction, Justice Anton Scalia, in typically coarse and malicious fashion, said to the American public, “Get over it.”

What exactly does “get over it” mean?

In this case, he’s really saying, “We, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, care less about the public and justice than about using our position to promote our own personal, conservative agendas, even if they subvert long-standing precedent, the constitution or the rights and liberties of individuals. Furthermore, my pride is so rigid and my ego so overweening and fragile that I cannot admit hypocrisy nor inconsistency even when it is as plain as the sun in the sky, especially because I'm smart enough to understand the futility of trying to justify the unjustifiable. So instead, I’ll shift the blame to you, the person asking the question, by saying 'get over it,' suggesting that the failing is not my lack of scruples nor dishonesty, but rather your inability to accept the injustice my toxic agenda helped foster.”

The next time you see a smirking, bloated man wearing a robe, sitting in a grand chair in a large courtroom, speaking in a condescending manner to the serfs that have come begging for a few crumbs of justice, it is likely Anton Scalia, the “Justice” who told us all, in his own snide way, to go screw ourselves.

- JT Compton

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