“…Today’s decision represents yet another example of this Court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the States…”
What he tipped his hand about is his belief, not in the States, but in the singular righteousness of the Feds.
The fact is States are finding what conservatives want to paper over, because conservatives want every state to ban it. They’d never in a million years tolerate even one.
Did the Supreme Court tip its hand? Duh, uh.
But the court really tipped its hand when it refused to overturn the 10th Circuit’s refusal to stay the decision overturning Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage.
“The Thomas-Scalia dissent suggests the two are sympathetic to laws banning gay marriage.”
You don’t say.
Look closely. You can see Unctuous Tony’s hand up Uncle Thomas’ ass.
Most important statement. “It seems obvious that every gay marriage that takes place makes it more difficult to rule against gay marriage in the end,” he said. “I can’t imagine the conservatives on the Court would have turned down these other cases and allowed all those marriages to take place over the last several months if they did not know that they were going to lose on the merits.” If so this bodes well not only for Gay Marriage but for the health care subsidies as ruling against would take insurance away from millions.
Well, it’s not like he asked a question during oral arguments or anything.
If Clarence Thomas cared so much about “states’ rights,” then why did he vote to overrule the Florida state courts in 2000 and hand the election to the guy who had lost it?
Simple – he doesn’t care about state’s rights. He cares about winning. he’s an outcome based adjudicator. If his side wins, then the process was fair. If his side loses, he complains – hypocritically.
It’s so terrifying that at LEAST two Justices misunderstand the very BASICS of the law and The Constitution, so blinded are they by their rigid political ideology. It is a disgrace! They are ignoring the very basics of the Constitution any high school law club easily understands. Vandals!
It would be indecorous to question his motives at this point in his career
Don’t think it’s the agenda, I think its the argument. When a tried and true argument they have polished and shined to a high luster does not fit their preconceived notion of how a case ‘should’ go the RATS (Roberts, Alito, Thomas & Scalia) discard their shiny toy and tend to go with their inner ‘compass’ rather than the law. The other justices seem to follow the law as they have followed it in previous arguments, even if it might go against their personal convictions.
Indecorous?
Scalia and Thomas?
7 to 2?
Why do you want us to lie about the conservative Justices?
Oh Clarence! What are we going to do???
If it came before the court he would vote to overturn Loving vs VA and invalidate his own marriage.
It scares me that these guys rule on the supreme law of the land. In some twisted fit of logic, the state’s rights (as much as the state has rights separate from the people) are more sacred than the people’s rights within that state.
Does Clarence Thomas also believe that his opinions are worth only 3/5 of the value of a white justice?
On a different blog, I posted that under Thomas’ own “logic,” if he and his so-called wife were to be in Alabama, they’d be spending their nights in separate jail cells. To which someone else responded, “nights” is plural, even in Alabama, and why do I think that he’d get past one?
Pissed? Indeed…
But Scalia himself has already said that it’s inevitable that the Supremes will rule that there’s a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas he said that once you decide that the states can’t outlaw consensual sodomy, there’s just no basis for saying that they can’t outlaw same-sex marriage: “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding.” If he thinks it’s indecorous to predict what the outcome of the same-sex-marriage case, maybe he shouldn’t have predicted it way back in 2003.
To be fair, solely from a procedural standpoint, I can see why they could take issue…altho their obvious rage is clearly driven by other things, namely their own bigotry towards the LGBT community.
When it comes down to it, what they’re really mad about is this: the stay requested by Alabama would be unjust if there is no real likelihood of success on the merits (i.e., that gay marriage will be ruled against). Thomas and Scalia are howling at the moon because they wanted to squeeze out a few more months of injustice before it gets taken away from them forever.
Yep. Their Hail Mary (literally) play was to insist that marriage definition was a matter of states’ rights, so the US Supremes could be shut out. But, with Clarence Thomas as part of the duo, they couldn’t really push it very hard.