OCTOBER 5, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE
Theocracy alert: Earlier today Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Alito signaled that they will overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that guarantees the right to same-sex marriage nationwide.
Advocate reports:
Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have opened the court’s term by calling for the overturning of its 2015 marriage equality decision.
The Obergefell v. Hodges decision threatens religious liberty, Alito wrote in a statement in which Thomas concurred.
CNN reports:
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, lashed out on Monday at the religious liberty implications of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that cleared the way for same-sex marriage nationwide.
Obergefell v. Hodges is the “landmark civil rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
On Monday Thomas wrote:
[Obergefell v. Hodges] enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.
…
By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix. Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’
For the record, same-sex marriage does not have “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.” On the contrary, same-sex marriage has no effect on religious liberty.
In the same decision Alito wrote:
Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws.
…
In Obergefell v. Hodges … the Court read a right to same-sex marriage into the Fourteenth Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text. Several Members of the Court noted that the Court’s decision would threaten the religious liberty of the many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman. If the States had been allowed to resolve this question through legislation, they could have included accommodations for those who hold these religious beliefs. … The Court, however, bypassed that democratic process. Worse still, though it briefly acknowledged that those with sincerely held religious objections to same-sex marriage are often ‘decent and honorable,’ … the Court went on to suggest that those beliefs espoused a bigoted worldview.
Pro Tip: If your religious superstition demands that you try to deny same-sex couples the right to marriage, you are, in fact, a bigot. Full stop.
The following is a sample of reactions via Twitter:
Bottom line: Earlier today Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Alito signaled that they will overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that guarantees the right to same-sex marriage nationwide.
