Rick Perry's embarrassment of the people of Texas continued today in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when asked by a voter at a meet and greet event how he squared his idea of limited government interference in peoples' lives with the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v Texas, a 2003 case decided during Perry's tenure as governor and one of the biggest cases the Supreme Court decided in the aughts (2000's). Can you guess what happened?
Perry's reply to the question, according to ABC News, was
I wish I could tell you I knew every Supreme Court case. I don’t, I’m not even going to try to go through every Supreme Court case, that would be — I’m not a lawyer. We can sit here and you know play I gotcha questions on what about this Supreme Court case or whatever, but let me tell you, you know and I know that the problem in this country is spending in Washington, D.C., it’s not some Supreme Court case.
Perry later confirmed he had no idea what the case was about when Austin American Statesman columnist and occasional Rachel Maddow Show guest Ken Herman asked for a clarification of whether Perry knew what the case was about. Perry deflected again, "I’m not taking the bar exam...I don’t know what a lot of legal cases involve."
Herman then told Perry it was the case that struck down Texas' sodomy law and the sodomy laws of 13 other states, including 3 other states that like Texas only criminalized same-sex sodomy. Perry then remarked, "My position on traditional marriage is clear and I don’t know need a law. I don’t need a federal law case to explain it to me."
As the ABC News report notes, Perry discussed Lawrence v Texas in his book Fed Up! and says in the book of the case, "Texans have a different view of the world than do the nine oligarchs in robes."
I get that most people don't know or care about the fine minutiae of most Supreme Court cases, but most people have a clue on the biggies and this was a biggie from the recent past. The case even got a few more mentions in the press in the last few weeks because late last month, the named plaintiff in Lawrence v Texas, John Geddes Lawrence, passed away at the age of 68.
Please Rick, do me and every other Texan, regardless of political persuasion, a favor and stop embarrassing the state by dropping out of the race, reigning as Guv and crawling deep into some hole (or closet) at your racially insensitive hunting lease. We don't have Molly Ivins anymore to transform the embarrassing performance of Texas politicians into stories people laugh at rather than groan at.