SCOTUS Gay Marriage Decision a Quantum Civil Rights Leap, But …

CONSIDER THIS-When it comes to Supreme Court decisions, Obergefell vs. Hodges, that has just given same-sex couples the right to have their marriage legally recognized throughout the United States, is unlike any other civil rights decision ever decided by the Supreme Court. Because marriage- like pregnancy- is a binary proposition- you either are or you’re not. There is no way to water down the result. 

What we thought in the past would end segregation in public schools when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954 or a woman's right to an abortion as clearly laid out in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 were neutered by lack of government action to enforce these holdings and subsequent state and federal legislation and judicial interpretations in complete derogation of what one thought was the clear intent of the Supreme Court when it initial decided these cases and others like them designed to redress generations of fundamental civil rights deprivation. 

But unlike these cases, where the realization of their respective decisions seems to still elude those it was designed to protect, there is no half marriage. 

So Americans schools remain de facto segregated 60 years after Brown said this was illegal and the media ignores this and clear language in Roe establishing rational standards that allowed a woman and her doctor to opt for an abortion at their discretion have gone out the window through a carefully orchestrated attack from conservatives who have placed one obstacle after another to a woman's right to a legal and safe abortion. 

Sure you can have an abortion ... but the state doesn't have to pay for it, if the person seeking it can't pay for it herself. Circumstances of already having too large a family that one cannot adequately provide for make no difference to those who find unquestioned sanctity in all human life. 

These right-to-lifers seem unfettered by the extreme poverty of an earth with over 7.3 billion inhabitants … a significant percentage of whom are already starving to death every year for lack of adequate food supplies to feed those already living. 

The latest gambit in the de facto overturning of the Roe landmark decision on abortion has been the requirement for admitting privileges at a local hospitals for all doctors performing abortions, which has succeeded in closing the majority of clinics in some states. 

What worries me is that while I see the Supreme Court decision as an immutable vindication of same-sex-couple’s fundamental civil right to marry that literally has no rational reason to deny it, I also have been raised with a significant portion of American society that is female-hating, gay-bashing, racist, antisemitic, and proactively destructive of anybody's rights except their own, which they feel should take precedence over people who refuse to know their place. 

Afterall, like Dylann Roof, these militantly ignorant folks see themselves as the only true Americans in a country under siege. The threat they still pose to we the people … all the people … should not be underestimated.

 

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected] ) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 53

Pub: Jun 30, 2015