Sometimes there is a slippery slope.
My friends Eva Fogelman and Menachem Z. Rosensaft are children of Holocaust survivors. They just published The Supreme Court ruled that discrimination is protected speech. As the children of Holocaust survivors, we understand where this leads:
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 6-3 majority opinion in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, saying that her refusal to serve a same-sex couple is “protected speech,” reminds us, however, that discrimination endorsed by the high court remains a clear and present danger, first and foremost for the LGBTQIA+ community, but also for the rest of us.
In this case, as in Dobbs, the Supreme Court is rolling back rights we thought were inviolable. How far is discrimination against gay marriage from discrimination against interracial marriage? Eva and Menachem remind us that the Loving case started in 1959 when the couple was found guilty by a VA judge who wrote: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red . . . The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced them to one year in prison, and the Supreme Court did not overturn the result until eight years later, in 1967.
Rulings like 303 Creative are part of a process of dehumanization — in this case, gays, but as Thomas noted in Dobbs, other rights and groups are at risk. Dehumanization of migrants is proceeding before our eyes, most recently with Gov. Abbott’s push children back into the river order, and his and DeSantis’s malignant migrant drop-off stunts.
Eva and Menachem write:
As a daughter and son of Holocaust survivors, we tend to understand social and political events through the prism of the destruction of European Jewry. The Jews were deprived of their rights in Nazi Germany immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933. And we know that excluding Jews and others from commercial and civil life was one of the earliest stages before their eventual annihilation.
They conclude:
We are here to speak out for and stand with the LGBTQ+ community and for all who may eventually be adversely affected by this misguided ruling. For all we know, it could be us.
Red state governments all over the country are doing as much and worse than the Supreme Court.
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