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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On his own show, Bill O’Reilly pretty much denied the existence of racism in the US. Larry Wilmore closely examines that claim, especially noting the curious nature of the panel that O’Reilly selected to discuss the issue.
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The week that just ended was a good one.
After the appalling tragedy of the previous week with the Charleston killings, things improved considerably this week with the confederate flag suddenly losing favor as a result of the killer’s fondness for it, then a key provision of Obamacare being upheld by the US Supreme Court, and then same body saying that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.
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One interesting point of the Obamacare verdict was its 6-3 nature. Recall that the opponents of Obamacare had lost their case in all the Appeals Courts where it had been heard. They won 2-1 only in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and then that court decided that the case would be heard en banc, i.e., reheard by the entire bench. It was predicted that the full court would reverse the decision by the three-judge panel, thus making the Appeals Courts results unanimous again.
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He was quick out of the gate with his own thoughts on yesterday’s historic ruling on same-sex marriage.
I finally got around to reading all the opinions (majority and four dissents) in yesterday’s 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges affirming the right of same sex couples to marry. The opinion went far beyond what I had hoped for and predicted, and can be considered a maximal outcome, giving same-sex couples pretty much everything they asked for and deserve, that they be allowed to exercise exactly the same marriage rights as opposite-sex couples and that this applies to all the states.
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