Justices Nominated by Trump and Judges in General Are Gunning For Gay Marriage
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| Born 2001 |
Analysis
To think we are here at this point because so many in the gays in the community voted for Trump. What were they thinking? Not thinking at all too busy looking for Mr.dick. These uninformed dudes are those born after 2000. I was feeling depressed after all the work we did. But now I feel better, we deserve what we get if we asked for it or they asked for it. I never got married even though I was close to two decades in committed relationships.
We warn about this but if you are uninformed or misinformed you are not going to pay attention to anything that those not jive with a stupid way of thinking that you know better than all.
Miss Davies up front went to jail for refusing to issue marriage certificates to a gay couple. She filed the petition to the Supreme Court. Her lawyers used a piece of the law it hasn't been used since they knock down abortion. When you have 4 members of the court not liking same sex marriage I have a feeling it will be taken for the full court. The court has the majority of Trump appointees plus Alito and Thomas who hate anything gay even though they gay-smile on graph and accepting illegal gifts and money from powerful Republicans. The day the Supremes knocks down same sex marriage will be my last day here. If I continue the postings, analysing news and events would be because once you are a journalist you don't stop, might concentrate in my International readers and ignore US. Being part of a nation who throws the good to the Russian bear and allows famine under their watch by one of its allies, the people in this nation need what ever they get, you see I believe in Karma. Adam Gonzalez
With so many weekly outrages from the Trump administration, it’s easy to overlook its long-term plans. Chief among them is reshaping the federal judiciary. As the first batch of nominees wends their way through the Senate confirmation process, the stakes for marriage equality are incredibly high.
The nominees don’t come out and say how much they hate Obergefell v. Hodges, the 10-year old Supreme Court decision that granted the right to marry to same-sex couples. But between their non-answers to direct questions about the ruling and their own anti-LGBTQ backgrounds, it’s pretty clear that they would like nothing more than to see the ruling overturned.
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Right now, there are 47 vacancies in the federal judiciary, and Trump has put fourth 11 nominees. The results has been, in the words of JP Collins, an associate professor at The George Washington University Law School, “a horror show.” Collins, writing for the legal site Balls and Strikes, analyzed the nominees and found that they haven’t been hiding their animus toward LGBTQ+ rights.
Eric Tung, a nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court, responded “no” when he was recently asked if, from an originalist perspective, “there’s a constitutional right to abortion, same-sex marriage, or sodomy.” Joshua Dunlap, a nominee to the First Circuit Appeals Court, interned at the anti-gay Christian Nationalist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom and graduated from Pensacola Christian College, which once canceled a performance by the Grammy-winning a cappella group The King’s Singers because one of the singers is gay.
Among those already approved by the Senate are Joshua Divine, a 35-year-old who once compared homosexuality to bestiality and, as Missouri’s deputy solicitor general, defended the state’s ban on gender-affirming health care for minors. Also approved for a federal judgeship was Whitney Hermandorfer, who worked in the Tennessee attorney general’s office. She was instrumental in arguing U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court case that banned gender-affirming health care for trans youth.
That the nominees are a collection of anti-LGBTQ extremists isn’t surprising. But what is alarming is how cagey they are when asked about marriage equality. As Collins notes, when asked point blank about Obergefell as precedent, they issue a string of weasel words. Strikingly, several had no problem saying that Supreme Court rulings striking down school segregation (Brown v. Board of Education) and bans on interracial marriages (Loving v. Virginia) were correctly decided, but punted when asked about Obergefell.
For example, in response to written questions from Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (IL), Christian Stevens, a nominee to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, said he would “faithfully follow Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, and other applicable Supreme Court precedents.” However, he said that sharing his opinions on other rulings, including Obergefell, would be “inappropriate.” Other nominees have used the same “inappropriate” dodge. Tung wouldn’t even go that far, stating blandly that “the Supreme Court granted such a right.”
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because these non-answers are the same strategy that Trump’s Supreme Court nominees used when asked about Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision granting people abortion access. Neil Gorsuch acknowledged the ruling granting women the right to an abortion was “precedent”, but he served up word salad when asked if it was decided correctly. When asked the same question, Brett Kavanaugh said he “understood about the importance of the precedence set forth in Roe v. Wade.”
Kavanaugh was even more opaque about Obergefell. When then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) pressed Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings on the same question, Kavanaugh simply said that Obergefell was precedent and refused to answer her question.
Of course, precedence meant nothing to the ideologues on the court. The far-right majority has invented legal reasoning to justify their political wish list, including giving Donald Trump free rein. They have overturned multiple rulings that have stood for decades.
So to hear Trump’s nominees for the judiciary pay lip service to “precedent” means nothing. If anything, they are even more likely to fabricate legal justifications to challenge Obergefell, in the hopes that they will be the judge who gets it to the Supreme Court to deal the fatal blow. Ending marriage equality would make the judge who started that challenge a hero on the right.
Trump’s nominees are only interested in the law insofar as it advances the right’s political interests. They are, in Collins’ words, “foaming at the mouth to undermine and eventually overturn Obergefell and relegate same-sex couples to second class status.” As judges, they could decide that county clerks don’t have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious liberty grounds, creating marriage deserts. Or they could come up with some excuse to reinstate one of the zombie anti-marriage laws still on the books in more than 30 states.
These aren’t jurists who are trying to apply the law. These are extremists who will shape the law to do what they want to see became reality. And repealing marriage equality is what they want.
All the eyes may be on the Supreme Court and its ongoing battle to turn back the clock and smooth the road to authoritarianism, but the nominees for the rest of the federal judiciary are the shock troops who will force the issue, which is what the right is counting on.
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