Going back to Rick Warren's presidential forum earlier, this week, I think it's important to point out this little bit of anti-gay dog-whistling going on:
Neither candidate shied away from a question about which current Supreme Court justice they would not have nominated.
Obama's reply: Clarence Thomas.
"I don't think he was a strong enough jurist or a legal thinker at the time for that. I profoundly disagree with his interpretation" of the Constitution, he said.
McCain said he would have never nominated Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
"This nomination should be based on the criteria on a proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution and not legislating from the bench," McCain added.
Those are the exact people sitting on the bench, minus Kennedy, who voted in favor of the Lawrence v. Texas decision that banned sodomy laws. He pretty much said that he wants to recriminalize homosexuality.
There isn't much better code to speak in here. The very fundies that he was speaking to at that forum were exactly the people who thought that Lawrence, along with Roe and Griswold, was an extreme case of judicial activism:
In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the court threw out all bans on sex acts between homosexuals, saying, according to Barron, "The right to privacy also included the right for same-sex couples to engage in same-sex sexual acts."
And later in 2003, when Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, it cited Lawrence v. Texas as justification.
Sekulow sees these rights expounded in Goodridge and Lawrence going straight back to Griswold.
"If you see a decision out of the Supreme Court that says same-sex marriage is required -- if that were to happen, I think they will find it primarily...originally...in Griswold, and bring it forward," Sekulow observed.
While it seems like the media doesn't really want to catch this goal (gay rights discourse is focused on marriage, and Lawrence seemed like a final decision to almost everyone), but McCain was talking to the exact audience that would want that case overturned, who agree with his reasoning, and he named almost every justice in that majority in his hit list.
Besides, whether he ever talks about wanting to reinstate sodomy laws or not, this is the most effective, direct, and, well, only way for sodomy laws to come back. And he's made it a central talking point when addressing fundamentalist audiences.
We shouldn't forget how easy it would be for that case to be overturned and to go back to the days when we were criminals just for loving.
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