The Girl Scout organization has been a progressive leader in LGBT rights. Unlike the Boy Scouts who have to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept gays as equals, the Girl Scouts have been way ahead of the curve in standing up for what is right and continue to do so.
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The last three days of the Supreme Court saw seven important opinions being released, including those on Obamacare, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, environmental regulation, and redistricting. In previous years too, major opinions were released at the very end and one issue that has come up for discussion is whether the justices deliberately keep the high-profile rulings until the end of the term.
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Despite the victories in the same-sex marriage and Obamacare cases, the general impression that people have is that the US Supreme Court is ideologically conservative. The meaning of labels like ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ and ‘right’ are notoriously hard to pin down and are operationally elusive and I would love to be able to avoid them but cannot because they do provide a rough but convenient shorthand description for a general attitude, and thus avoids having to provide detailed descriptions.
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It is not only evangelical Christians who oppose same-sex marriage. Orthodox Jews also dislike it and were upset by the Supreme Court verdict. One group of Orthodox Jews decided to protest New York’s Gay Pride parade held over the weekend but an acute observer noticed that there was something not quite right about the man clad in traditional black Orthodox garb and hat and with long hair.
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The next stage in the war waged by same-sex marriage opponents is becoming clear. Forget the bluster about passing a constitutional amendment specifically banning it or impeaching the supreme court justices who voted in favor of it and replacing them with justices who will vote in the opposite way. Those things will never, ever happen and are just red meat thrown out to the rubes by politicians to get them all riled up.
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Now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land, the next frontier is obtaining justice for the transgender community, the ‘T’ in LGBT. The discrimination they face is terrible. But apart from the major hurdles and cruelties they experience, they also face many indignities, such as how people feel that they can ask them the most intimate questions.
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The three remaining opinions in the cases I discussed earlier have been issued.
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Conservatives are losing their minds over last week’s double whammy they received from the US Supreme Court on Obamacare and same-sex marriage and are trying to find ways to defy the rulings. While there is little they can do about the Obamacare decision except vow to repeal it whenever they get the opportunity to do so after some future election success, they have more options with same-sex marriage.
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Today is the last day for the current term of the US Supreme Court and three opinions are still to be issued. Although the extremely high profile ones of Obamacare and same-sex marriage are done, I am particularly interested in two of the remaining ones, dealing as they do with gerrymandering and the death penalty. (The third remaining opinion to be issued is Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency as to “Whether the Environmental Protection Agency unreasonably refused to consider costs in determining whether it is appropriate to regulate hazardous air pollutants emitted by electric utilities” and pits the power plant industry against the EPA.)
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