One thing that I find both amusing and frustrating is names of organizations that, when it comes to reflecting what these organizations stand for, could not be further from the truth, and could not less accurately reflect reality. One such name is the National Organization for Marriage (theirs and no one else's). To NOM: my message is addressed to you.
As you would know, the Supreme Court announced last month that it will decide the question of the if Fourteenth Amendment grants same-sex couples the right to marry and prohibits states from infringing on this right. I am here to offer you some advice on what you are saying about this upcoming case, and your interpretations of the signs of how the court will rule. It's good to have something else to rip you on apart from your homophobia and transphobia, not just manifested in your tooth-and-nail fight against marriage equality, but also your opposition to anti-discrimination laws, your support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", your opposition to school anti-bullying programs, your opposition to transgender people using their proper bathrooms, your support for ex-gay therapy, your violent rhetoric towards gay people,your conflations of homosexuality and pedophilia, and your smearing of same-sex parents, gay politicians, and gay hate crime victims. My message to you is: stop.
Your interpretation of the signs from the Supreme Court is so laughably flawed, full of so many wilful lies and distortions, with the signs being so absurdly spun in your favor they've been twisted more than a screw that has completely drilled through its panel of wood, that while you live in the blissful ignorance of having convinced yourself of the delusion that you will win at the Supreme Court, the rest of us are standing back, looking at you, and laughing ourselves halfway to death over how truly detached from reality you are. Like you are with your already failed attempt to start a long-lasting protest, your so-called "March for Marriage" (yours and no one else's), and with your hallucinations that your past Marches have somehow been successful. Let's examine their history.
Your Marches for Marriage (yours and no one else's) began in 2013. The first one was on March 26 of that year, as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8. Less than two months later, Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota had legalized same-sex marriage. By the end of the year, Illinois and Hawaii had done so as well. New Jersey and New Mexico did so through their state courts, and your ultimate goal of a win at the Supreme Court was dashed, with Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act being invalidated, and a lower court ruling invalidating Proposition 8 being allowed to go into effect.
But at least in 2013, you were able to get some attendance. The same could not be said for 2014. Despite six months of planning, fundraising, organising high-profile speakers, and providing transportation, the attendance was so low that even your official media sponsor, the Washington Times, put the attendance in the mere hundreds. And was it successful? Let's see. You held it on the 19th of June. A mere six days later, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit became the first to declare same-sex marriage a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. On July 28, the Fourth Circuit became the second. On September 4, the Seventh Circuit became the third. And on October 6, the Supreme Court let stand all three rulings.
At the time of your first rally, same-sex marriage was legal in 9 states. After your second, it's legal in 35 (not counting Kansas and Alabama). And now you're having another one? Stop.
Also of interest is the people with whom you are fighting this futile battle. In 2012, we learned through leaked memos who you employ to fight equality: conservative racial minorities. We know all about your attempts to make opposition to marriage equality a key component of racial identity politics, and to polarize the Democratic Party by turning its black supporters against its LGBT supporters. So it's no surprise that accompanying you at the March for Marriage (yours and no one else's) is Bill Owens, the founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, a group even worse than yours. Laughably, you refer to him and his ilk as "civil rights activists", even though actual civil rights leaders have found no evidence of them ever being involved. Gee, I wonder if they'll be suspended for six months. But even more laughably, you refer to them as civil rights activists because they fight against marriage equality, which is like referring to people as civil rights activists because they fought against Loving v. Virginia. Of course, you and Owens utterly detest such comparisons between black equality and LGBT equality. Well, guess what: I utterly detest your attempts to keep LGBT people as second class citizens through employing conservative black pastors, who should know much better than to behave like that after living as second class citizens themselves. Stop.
But I also want to investigate why you are still pressing ahead at all; pressing ahead with these futile Marches for Marriage (yours and no one else's) and pressing ahead with these offensive pastors. One reason might be your reliance on a case about this issue from over 40 years ago, Baker v. Nelson, in which the Supreme Court upheld bans on same-sex marriage "for want of a substantial federal question." Perhaps your hilarious insistence that this case still remains binding national precedent is contributing to your delusion that you have not lost. After all, your chairman, John Eastman, declared at last year's March for Marriage (yours and no one else's) that he didn't think the Supreme Court would rule in favor of marriage equality because "they already decided the issue 40 years ago", which doesn't sound like he was making a sarcastic joke at all.
I don't know where you've been in that time, NOM, but a lot has changed over those last forty years. These changes are known as subsequent doctrinal developments. What this means is when the jurisprudence that supported an earlier decision has been all but eradicated by such developments, that decision is no longer binding. And just so you know how much the prior jurisprudence has been eradicated, here's a history.
Baker v. Nelson was decided in 1972, a time where states were permitted to criminalize same-sex sexual relations, as decided by Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986. Ten years after that, in 1996, the Supreme Court took the first step of overturning that horrible decision with Romer v. Evans, when it slapped down Colorado's attempt to amend its state constitution to remove anti-discrimination protections from lesbians, gays and bisexuals but no one else. After seven more years, in 2003, the Court went the rest of the way in Lawrence v. Texas, invalidating anti-sodomy laws. All of a sudden, a substantial basis supporting Baker, that same-sex sexual relations could be criminalized, no longer existed. But the significance of Lawrence doesn't stop there. It is a ruling that "dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned." And no, I am not quoting a supporter of marriage equality there. I am quoting Justice Antonin Scalia, no friend of LGBT equality by any means.
If Lawrence was the placing of the dynamite in the building about to be imploded, then United States v. Windsor was the detonation. With this ruling, Baker imploded completely. Justice Anthony Kennedy invoked the Fifth Amendment, not the Tenth Amendment, as the primary basis for invalidating Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. He wrote at length about how its "purpose and effect is to disparage and injure" same-sex couples. He wrote of their "personhood and dignity". He wrote of how DOMA "demeans" them and "humiliates" their children. Any sane person is aware of "how easy it is, indeed how inevitable it is," to extend Windsor's reasoning to state bans on same-sex marriage. And once again, I am quoting no friend of LGBT equality. Once again, I am quoting Justice Scalia.
Windsor was a ruling affirming the federal government's responsibility to protect same-sex couples who had been protected by the states. The right of the states to legalise same-sex marriage was affirmed, but their right to ban it was not. So you can stop your hand-wringing about how it was a ruling affirming the right of the states to define marriage. And you can stop your embarrassing claims of how a ruling from over 40 years ago from a jurisprudence in which the relationships of gay people could be criminalized is somehow still relevant today. Seriously. Stop.
In fact, the need for you to stop that kind of thinking is quite urgent, because it's created a constitutional crisis in a state already known for disobeying laws and orders that it doesn't like whenever it wants to continue to persecute and ostracise a group of people that it doesn't like. Alabama has been ordered by a federal district judge to start licensing and recognising same-sex marriages, but you have urged state officials not to do so. Until only a few days ago, most took that advice. The main motivator for your support for this lawlessness is your belief that federal courts lower than the Supreme Court are going against the latter's wishes by ruling in favour of marriage equality. To support this claim, you are still attempting to point to Baker and Windsor as evidence that the Supreme Court disagrees with the lower federal courts. Time after time, you've condemned the Supreme Court for not staying these rulings, and apparently, not seen the bleeding obvious indication of such denials. Regarding the federal judges who rule for marriage equality, you've slammed the Supreme Court for "letting them get away with it." Yet what that just might mean has not actually occurred to you, and that is: the Supreme Court is happy with the rulings. It doesn't the rulings as being in conflict with what it wants. It is happy for marriage equality to go ahead, even in states in the Eleventh Circuit, which has not yet even established an appellate court precedent on the issue.
In another attempt to justify your call to lawlessness, you said that Alabama's probate judges, who are responsible for the issuance of marriage licenses, "must honor their oath to the people they serve." Well, I actually agree with that, but it leads me to a slightly different conclusion than what it leads you to. Only a group as deluded as you could claim that state officials must serve their people as a reason to call for state officials to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. And only a group as deluded as you could claim, as you did, that the Supreme Court chose to review your only legal victory in a circuit court, in the Sixth Circuit, so they could affirm the ruling. Yes. Apparently, allowing the pro-equality rulings to go into effect and bring marriage equality to 35 states (not counting Kansas and Alabama), while choosing to review the one ruling against equality, shows that they will take the latter side of this question. And to top it all off, you've attempted to twist the federal judiciary in your favour by trying to get Justice Ginsburg thrown off the case just for saying that the country will be able to accept a pro-equality decision. Stop.
Ultimately, NOM, I do not believe that this message will convince you that you should stop your fight. Denying equality before the law to LGBT people is so absolutely critical for you that only when the Supreme Court finally does rule for equality will you, when you see that you have no avenues left to contest the ruling, finally accept that you lost. And it will be a reluctant, bitter acceptance. But even though I don't think I can convince you, I will still try. I will still try to bring you out of your bubble of ignorance and into the light of reality. When you are fighting a battle that everyone but you knows you are going to lose; when the signs are so severely stacked against you that the only way you can remain optimistic is with a mental gymnastics routine of the highest degree of difficulty; when your cause is an attempt at a revival of the bigoted and prejudiced remnants left over from a time during which the true lives and loves of so many were so shamefully shoved into a closet by their "society", remember that one word: stop.