Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Scalia and Alito ask blatantly bigoted questions


The Supreme Court heard arguments today in the matter of California’s Prop 8 which banned marriage equality. Below from the CNN blog.
According to Toobin, there were a lot of questions along these lines from Justices Scalia and Alito: We don’t know the effects of same sex parenting on children, so why don’t we wait and let the states go experiment? Why do we, the Supreme Court, have to get involved in this process?
Toobin said Roberts also seemed sympathetic to these questions.
Believe it or not, one of the legal issues is whether homosexuals are a class subject to discrimination so that they deserve special protection under the law. I submit that the questions and assertions above prove that the discrimination is pervasive.

After all, no heterosexual couple in America is subject to a fitness review when they want to get married and have children. Suitability to be a parent is not considered in any way when a couple is applying for a marriage license. So why should gays be subject to sociological review to determine their fitness as parents before they are treated equally? (For the record, the sociological research is clear that same-sex parents are not any less successful than different sex parents).

And can you imagine them applying this standard to other groups? Would it be an appropriate question for them to say, “We don’t know the effects of Jewish parenting on children, so why don’t we wait and let the states go experiment?” Of course not.


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