Am I the only one who thinks all the blue dogs and Republicans are coming out in favor of gay marriage because they know Fat Tony and the rest of Opus Dei on the Supreme Court are going to uphold DOMA, so all these guys can claim they supported gay marriage but that SCOTUS just got in the way?
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Baud
No. That’s exactly backwards. If the court upholds DOMA, then the issue goes before Congress, and all these Blue Dogs and conservatives will have to vote on it. On the other hand, if you think the Supreme Court will overturn DOMA, this give them a chance to get ahead of the game.
Zifnab
That’s a dangerous game. If the Senate puts DOMA repeal on the legislative table (or slides it into an appropriations bill) then Republicans would be caught doing the Willard Mittens Romney Double-Take.
I suspect they’re all coming out in favor of it, because they’re predicting either Kennedy or Roberts (or both) will strike the law down, and they all want to pretend they were on the right side of history without actually voting *for* anything.
Of course, I’d also note that people who claim they know how the SCOTUS is going to vote before it actually votes are notoriously prone to being wrong. Did anyone honestly expect Roberts to flip like he did on PPACA? Hell, did anyone honestly expect as many SCOTUS wins as the liberals got during the Bush Admin “Fuck the law” post-9/11 Era? Did anyone call Citizen’s United? Or Bush v Gore for that matter?
The way our SC is split, its practically a coin flip. I just hope Roberts catches Scalia spitting in his coffee an hour before he starts writing an opinion, and we get another ruling-from-spite.
Baud
@Baud:
Besides, now is the best time to distance yourself from Justice Scalia’s inevitable question, “But doesn’t God hate fags?”
Gin & Tonic
No.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: Second. They’re trying to get out in front of this so they can court the new minority the GOP mistakenly thinks they can get to vote for them.
lojasmo
DOMA’s going down. They’ll never have to face an actual vote.
dmsilev
Fat Tony will rule against The Gay, that’s basically a given. Ditto Alito and Thomas. But Kennedy has historically been fairly friendly towards gay rights (though admittedly Kennedy has gone increasingly wingnut in the last few years) and Roberts is a corporatist at heart who probably doesn’t care all that deeply about gay marriage per se. Given how things are trending re: attitudes towards gay marriage, I could certainly see Roberts ruling against Prop 8 and possibly against DOMA, and if he does Kennedy probably does as well.
Baud
By the way, I wish this case had been billed as the modern court’s Plessy v. Brown moment. Unlike Brown v. Board of Education, this will not be a unanimous opinion, and I want history to give the dissenters the scorn they deserve.
Eric U.
@SatanicPanic: kinda lost on who their new poster boy would be.
MikeJ
@Zifnab:
Of course reports from inside the court was that Roberts was on board for striking it down until the other conservatives started acting too assholish and only switch at the last minute.
Rook
Yeah, pretty much. But the law of unintended consequences does indeed apply. There is no backlash against same sex marriage. Not with the positive numbers still going up. Indeed, I suspect that any backlash will fall out on the conservatives/Republicans.
Ben Franklin
Thomas is speculated to default to SSM, and I hope it creates a rift between Scalia and his paramour.
jheartney
For “Republicans coming out for Gay Marriage” I think the sole example is Portman. Rove immediately walked back his weekend statement to say that he thought some no-hope GOP presidential candidate might support it, but not the actual nominee. As for McCaskill, she won’t be facing voters for another half decade. Plenty of time for the issue to die.
Litlebritdifrnt
According to my twitter feed (not a reliable source obviously) all of the legislators have been basically told that they have 24 hours to support the issue or be caught on the wrong side of history. There is an air of inevitability out there. One clue, Chief Justice Roberts gay cousin (god daughter of his mother) is going to be in the audience tomorrow.
On my drive home this evening there was a spokesperson for NOM on talking about their rally tomorrow and their march on SCOTUS. The spox ended with “it is time for people to stand up, a child deserves to be raised by a mother and a father”. WTF? Do these people not know what the divorce rate is in this country? What the single parent rate is? Are they advocating for a ban on divorce? He was talking about being “pro marriage” which is really what we all believe, we are “pro marriage” for everyone. I do not think these people know what they are talking about.
Baud
I kind of hope Scalia and Thomas do make asses of themselves and dissent. Just about every Republican politician out there has said those two are their model Justices. I would like to see that endorsement thrown back at them.
Ben Franklin
Teh linky….
http://washingtonexaminer.com/will-justice-clarence-thomas-vote-in-favor-of-gay-marriage/article/2515518
Hill Dweller
OT: Another Democratic Senator(Tim Johnson) is retiring in ’14.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Baud:
I like to think of it more of a Loving v. Virginia moment. Good luck to anyone who was on the wrong side of that decision.
Yutsano
@Litlebritdifrnt: I don’t expect Roberts to be persuaded by familial appeals, although I have read a couple of articles that suggest that he and the cousin are at least friendly. I honestly have no idea how Roberts will rule, although he will want cover if he goes with the liberal justices, which means he gets Kennedy on his side or it’s 5-4 fuck the queers the whole way down.
? Martin
There’s no upside to opposing it. The money’s all dried up.
SatanicPanic
@Eric U.: Good point. There is currently an opportunity for a telegenic LGBT person willing to shill for the Republicans. Good $$$ to be made fleecing the rubes if anyone is interested.
dmsilev
@Litlebritdifrnt: They claim to be advocating for traditional marriage, as described in the Bible. You know, a marriage between one man and however many hundreds of wives/concubines Solomon was supposed to have. Or between one man, one woman, and the man’s brother who will step in after the man’s death. Etc.
Baud
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Same thing. Plessy was the case that upheld Jim Crow, and Brown was the case that ended it. That’s what I meant by Plessy v. Brown — which side of history will the Justices be on?
max
Am I the only one who thinks all the blue dogs and Republicans are coming out in favor of gay marriage because they know Fat Tony and the rest of Opus Dei on the Supreme Court are going to uphold DOMA, so all these guys can claim they supported gay marriage but that SCOTUS just got in the way?
No, I think we’re in the portion of the election cycle where fallout is minimal for such ‘advanced’ stances. And besides that, their staffs would start to hate them if they tried to hold the line.
Now if you said, everybody wants the credit for the no muss, no effort shift to gay marriage, well, that just goes with rebranding.
Hey, they rode that anti-gay marriage thing to a brief burst of wedge issue success but now the tide has turned and the party is over. Onward! To the next moral panic!
max
[‘Since, in high school, I wrote an angry letter to the editor condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the sodomy law*, they’re always going to late to the party as far as I’m concerned.’]
* They didn’t print it. Or anything even remotely like it.
Frankensteinbeck
As far as the Supreme Court goes, I think you can no longer predict because of the Black President factor. The spittle-flecked raving hate ‘conservatives’ have for Obama goes all the way to the highest levels. It causes people to abandon their principles (even principles we hate) and self-interest to deliver any kind of insult to Obama, no matter how petty.
Litlebritdifrnt
@dmsilev:
Yeah. It really ticked me off back in 1981 when I wanted to get married in my local Church of England church and the vicar told me I couldn’t because my prospective husband had been divorced. I said to him “excuse me? but wasn’t the Church of England formed so that Henry VIII could divorce?” Pissed me off to no end. Couldn’t give a snot these days of course, was married by a Magistrate at the end of the pier in Atlantic Beach this time.
Another fun thing, my twitter feed today has been full of “Newt Gingrich thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman who isn’t sick” links. Good times.
AT
I think you’ll find a lot of the moderate conservative/blue dog types actually quite like their gay friends and have had to be against it for political reasons, but now it’s acceptable to come out they are jumping. Not exactly full blown profiles in courage but better late than never
Roger Moore
@Baud:
They may also be in a rush to get their markers down before oral arguments. They won’t look as good as the people who argued against DOMA before the Court took it up, but they’ll look better than the people who waited until after it was clear how the Court was going to rule and decided to flip to the winning side.
ruemara
This is a new level of cynicism? Funny, it’s my primary level. I fully believe they’re coming out against DOMA to present the new gay friendly face of the GOP in time for 2014. Have to start appealing to those queer dollars and votes. Plus, if the USSC fails to strike down DOMA, they get to be the good guys. If the USSC does strike down DOMA, they get to be good guys and prescient, the new face of the kinder, gentler, more tolerant GOP. Win/Win. It’s not rocket surgery, John. This is all it is.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Yutsano:
I disagree, as we saw with Portman, familial circumstances matter. According to the stories today Roberts likes his cousin, she is present at many family gatherings, she ADORES her godmother (Roberts Mom), I think there could be (my speculation of course) in the back of his mind, an inkling that he is about to deny a basic civil right to his cousin, his family member, it is harder to deny rights to a faceless gay person than it is to look at a member of your family next Thanksgiving and say yeah “you are a second class citizen”. Even Rush Limbaugh was saying today that Roberts was going to “cave” because he has a gay cousin. He sees the writing on the wall, he knows what is coming.
JPL
The fine state of GA passed an amendment stating that marriage was between a man and a woman. The congressman who introduced was accused of infidelity during his divorce proceedings.
JPL
Exactly how many republican Senators and House members now support the gays? Portman came out but who are the others.
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
And one big difference is that changes in the definition of marriage are inherently a lot stickier than many other civil rights. Once you rule that people can get married, they will get married and form families. Overturning their right to be married isn’t just taking away their ability to do new things; it’s taking away their status as a legally recognized family. That’s a much bigger hill to climb, and after a few years of marriage equality it’ll be an unclimbable mountain.
geg6
I think both Prop8 and DOMA are going down. Alito, Thomas and Scalia will be dissenting. I can’t see how Kennedy, based on his past rulings on such matters, doesn’t strike them down. And I think the family issue with Roberts will be decisive for him. As another commenter has already mentioned, it’s easy to deny the humanity of a faceless party to a lawsuit. Much harder to look that person whose humanity you’ve denied in the face across the Thanksgiving table.
Fair Economist
Roberts is a conservative Republican who has the sense to realize he doesn’t want his party on the wrong side of a big wedge issue. DOMA, which is on incredibly flimsy legal ground to start with, is going down. Kennedy and even Alito will probably think that way too. Scalia is too senile and Thomas too reactionary to perceive the political tradeoffs so likely 6-3 to overturn.
Prop 8 is less clear. It would be politically to the Republican party’s benefit to find a constitutional right to equal marriage but I don’t think a bunch of hard-line conservative Catholics can go that far. I’m not sure even the four moderates can go that far. Since Prop 8 is basically moot if they strike down DOMA (just get married in Seattle) I predict they’ll punt on Prop 8 and put out a ruling on some technical issue. Nobody will care whether Prop 8 stands or falls at that point.
Actually, given that the moderates actually respect precedent and probably want the referenda repealing anti-equal marriages statutes, they’ll probably be *less* inclined to find a constitutional right to equal marriage in the 14th amendment than Roberts. Although we’d probably never hear about it, it’s amusing to think of Roberts begging Scalia or Thomas to be the 5th vote for a constitutional right to gay marriage after some moderates insist on a more limited and deferential ruling.
Redshirt
I know the Republican brain can flip on a dime from one day to the next given whatever marching orders, but man, I have a hard time believing your typical Wingnut can change their tune regarding homosexuality. They spew such vile, unrestricted hatred on the subject with such predictability, I don’t see how it would be possible for them to follow their leaders, IF the Republican Party decided to support gay marriage.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
Roberts will have a much easier time joining the pro-equality side if Kennedy is already there. He’ll be able to keep his family happy and justify himself to conservatives by claiming it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had voted the other way.
MikeBoyScout
Wow. Right out of the box Baud @1 nailed it.
Anywho, I look forward to Fat Tony’s opinion as I’m sure it will further cement his case for being the Justice Brown of the 20th/21st century.
The Bush family… is there nothing they cannot fk up?
Bruce S
“all the…Republicans are coming out in favor of gay marriage”
But, uh, “all the Republicans” aren’t coming out for gay marriage. Not even close…Portman barely counts and he’s being rebuffed by fellow legislators. And outliers like Ted Olson and a few others who don’t hold office or even official positions in the GOP superstructure are NOT the party. The crucial primary base is mostly intransigent on this issue and that’s what will drive the politics. Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas will reflect this twisted ground reality and vote partisan. Kennedy is another outlier. Not even close to reflective of “all the Republicans” who matter in the political “mainstream” of this pathological party. And he holds the wild card. Thankfully. Maybe Roberts, reflecting the Portman Effect, which is unanticipated or late-blooming recognition of self-interest in a “controversial” social issue for a Randian right-winger. But…
This isn’t cynicism. It’s delusion.
I hope/wish I were wrong.
Nate Dawg
@Fair Economist: Actually, the Court is only deciding constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA, which only applies to Federal government. So the point will not be moot. States will still be able to ignore marriages of other states if the Windsor case comes out with Section 3 being struck down (as it likely will).
Prop 8 case is the only case that allows across-the-board equality, and that’s what Boies and Olsen are going for. I was less hopeful a year ago, but seems the tide is turning, and all these rats fleeing the ship makes me think they know a big decision is going to come out and they don’t want to be on the “hate teh ghey” bandwagon when it does.
Fair Economist
@Roger Moore:
The arguments for Prop 8 are monumentally, epically, bad; to the point that even other supporters were desperate to suppress videos of them. There’s no cameras in the US Supreme Court but even the summaries we get on the evening news will probably embarrass opponents and create supporters of equal marriage. There have got to be a lot of politicians worried about having “bigot” stamped on their forehead once the public starts hearing about the arguments.
Bruce S
@Fair Economist:
When your most fervid electoral base is drawn from a bunch of bigots, what’s the downside? Lots of GOPer Pols need the bigot vote in those gerrymandered districts – the Crazies hate the Gays. They’re not changing spots overnight. Ten years, probably a different story. But “God Hates Fags!” for a lot of core GOP activists.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
There are at least a couple of ways they could refuse to uphold Prop 8 without ruling on the underlying issues. They could rule that the group defending it lacks standing, or they could rule that because Prop 8 took away an established right it’s different from laws that blocked marriage equality before anyone had a chance to take advantage of it.
The Other Chuck
@Baud: Plessy v. Brown is still an odd way to put it, since Homer Plessy and Oliver Brown were both the plaintiffs fighting against discrimination. I guess the ironic phrasing adds to it though.
Hey wow, it didn’t take a minute for the edit box to come up, love the new site.
Fair Economist
@Nate Dawg:
Hmm. Then Prop 8 is dead too and the only questions is the margin to overturn and the official basis for overturning.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
You don’t like the “only straight couples can have unplanned pregnancies” argument?
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I’m predicting DOMA being struck down — punt or narrow decision on Prop 8. Biggest risk is that Prop 8 is upheld (5-4), with the conservatives telling California to get it right on their own.
Baud
@The Other Chuck:
I know. I suck.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW John Roberts has a gay cousin who will attend the arguments.
Aside from that, be as cynical as you want.
Nate Dawg
Yes, that’s the biggest risk.
I’ve been thinking this over though and they could decide DOMA on a state’s vs. fed government grounds, and then hold that Proposition 8 isn’t unconstitutional. If they do so, they will enshrine in law that there is no fundamental constitutional right to marry (a person of the same sex).
That would suck, because it will likely be overturned years down the line–the way things are going. That said, I doubt they’d go that far when they can punt on the issue in a variety of ways.
Fair Economist
@Bruce S:
In just a few years, at current rates of opinion change, being anti-gay marriage is going to be a major electoral drag even in conservative districts. Plus TPTB in the Republican party are going to be working overtime to get even the bigots to accept equal marriage because they need to defuse this wedge issue fast or it could be lethal for them as soon as 2016.
YoohooCthulhu
@MikeJ:
I bet a substantial amount of money on Intrade in favor of the fact that Roberts would uphold it, but based on a different rationale:
a) Media “sky is falling” reports are usually overblown
b) It was vaguely predictable that he would not be in favor of striking the whole thing down. Knowing that the other conservatives certainly wanted to remove the whole thing left him upholding it in some form (I personally thought more than the medicaid provision would be removed)
Mnemosyne
@Bruce S:
Not all bigots are the same. I suspect the Republicans are hoping to bring people like Andrew Sullivan back into the fold — low-tax conservatives who are themselves gay or gay-friendly and couldn’t stand the bigotry that was specific to gays anymore. Frankly, a lot of them (including Sully) couldn’t care less about racial bigotry or misogyny, so they’ll be happy to run back “home” to the Republicans once that little misunderstanding about homosexuality is resolved.
(Note that I am not including all white gay men in this group. Just pointing out that there is a subgroup within the larger group of white gay men that’s only voting for Democrats because of their better stand on gay rights.)
Ron Thompson
I wouldn’t over-generalize from the actions of a few windsocks. Portman’s acting out of purely personal motives. Mark Warner is positioning himself to run for President. McCaskill is the hard one to figure. I suppose she understands that her third-term chances in 2018 are remote, so now she’s going to join the Democratic Party with an eye toward post-Senate employment opportunities, something her compatriot Blanche Lincoln may have left too late.
As Hunter Thompson wrote of Hubert Humphrey, “Is there no place in the government for a completely dishonest man? A United States Senator?”
NanComb
@Mnemosyne:
I hate to be that guy, but you’ll note that Rob Portman isn’t coming out on his view of racial inequality in America or anything. One of the advantages (slight advantages, but not insignificant for conservatives) is that gays *look* and often *talk* just like their straight counterparts (and sometimes have similar economic status too). Gay marriage is theoretically a great “token” issue for conservatives to give in on to show that they’re pro-diversity without having to actually sit down with icky brown folks, were it not for the religious fervor of the Republican base.
JWL
I don’t doubt it’s already been said up-thread: you can’t be too cynical. Politically speaking, I mean. In the rest of living a good life, absolute cynicism is little less than a cancer of the soul.
Take my word for it.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: Well, remember that gay marriage was ONLY used as a GOTV effort. It never moved voters across parties, it merely turned out the base in higher numbers. It no longer works in that way, so the issue goes.
If you want to know why the GOP is opposing gun control beyond all reason, it’s because it still works as a GOTV move. Challenge is that it may work for both sides for a change. We’ll see.
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many concubines,
And many, many wives.
But when old age crept over them
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.
JPL
Scalia will offer some unique words of wisdom, although it will be hard to top his broccoli argument. His racial entitlement argument would have been correct if he supported the VRA. Since whites had the right to vote for a long time, it was a racial entitlement for them.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
“people like Andrew Sullivan”
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for often-hapless Dems) Andrew Sullivan represents a small pimple on the ass of what passes for contemporary “conservatism” – to paraphrase Stalin re The Pope, how many precincts does Andrew Sullivan have? In hard-core RedLand, where most of the GOP congresscritters hail from, not a one. They hate “people like Andrew Sullivan” – if not for his “gay” for the fact that he’s one of the biggest Obama boosters in “lamestream” media. He ain’t going back – because there’s no “there” left there for him and his ilk. The GOP has boxed itself into dependence on completely crazy people. Frankly, their gerrymandering and the primacy of Tea Partyized primary contests – while it helps them control Congress probably for most of this decade – keeps them isolated as a “national party” moving forward.
The Other Chuck
@Mnemosyne:
Especially Andrew “Bell Curve” Sullivan.
Mnemosyne
@Bruce S:
It’s not how many precincts he and people like him have — it’s how much money they’re willing to push to crazy Republicans in red districts where they’re not going to have to live anyway. If Republicans can develop enough of a “wink-wink-nudge-nudge you know my crrrazy constituents are making me say this,” the money will start rolling in again.
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeBoyScout:
Lemme think about that for a whileNO.
kay
Portman split the GOP in OH. I think it’s real, because it’s a fracture along several lines.
It looks to like old-style social cons v social issue Tea people v small gubmint Tea people v The Money Party (Portman is Money Party).
They’re going to have to appease the old style social cons because they Want Their Party Back. I think they’re blaming the Tea people for all this chaos.
JPL
There’s a lot of wishful thinking about the Supreme’s ruling on this thread. The wildcard is Kennedy but most of the time he does vote with Scalia.
Bruce S
@Fair Economist:
“TPTB in the Republican party are going to be working overtime to get even the bigots to accept equal marriage…”
Good luck to them! But a key constituency of the GOP is irrationally opposed to gay marriage and will continue to be for at least the near term future. In a decade, age demographics will shift this even among so-called “evangelicals” – but not by 2016 and probably not til after 2020. And by then, frankly, the Latino demographics will matter far more. And that’s an almost equally hard slog for the GOP establishment who are suddenly tasking themselves with teaching better manners to their Frankenstein monsters who have been elevated to core constituents and often gerrymandered into controlling factions. I think this is much more difficult than some two-step by Karl Rove, et. al. to shift the ground that they have been standing on. Look at how long it took the Democrats to recover what they lost in the South from having done the right thing re: Civil Rights. All of this analysis and second-guessing is correct “in the long run” – but there’s a reason it’s called “the long run.”
Violet
@kay: Have you spoken with any of the Republican volunteers and political types that you encounter in your Dem efforts? Curious if Republicans behind the scenes in Ohio are saying anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Kennedy has been fairly good on the few LGBT cases that have come before the Court. OTOH he has become more of a douchebag over time.
Lavocat
Naw. I’m even more cynical than that.
This has to do with the power of fundraising as much as anything else.
The GOP just wants to steal a little of the Dems’ thunder.
Study after study that I have seen shows that gays put their money where their mouth is much more than any other social group, especially with regard to social issues like gay marriage, gay adoption, et al.
This is more of an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” than anything else.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think that Andrew Sullivan and his “type” are exactly the money-tree the GOPers are currying favor with, when the crazy billionaires can drop insane amounts of money on the Crazies, without a second thought. I’m not sure the Koch brothers, et. al. give a shit whether they hold a winning hand. They are ideologues who are happy just fucking things up. Middle class and even relatively wealthy gays with “disposable income” are no match for these scumbags. I think the GOP has very serious structural problems – frankly to the point of serious pathology governing their messaging – in terms of it’s long-coddled base, that they can’t wriggle out of in one election cycle.
rikyrah
I disagree with you, Cole. I think DOMA will be struck down. vote 6-3. the Blue Dogs are showing no courage at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruce S: But how much do the Koch Bros. and Sheldon Adelson care about gay issues?
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: When O’Connor retired, he lost his will to be the moderate voice. imo
also, too.. I love being proved wrong on issues like this.
kay
@Violet:
I think they are. What we have here are older social cons + money party. Thats one voter, a combo, both ideas.
GWB’s coalition, in other words. I think they saw Portman as like Bush, because don’t forget Bush carried this state on arms-length gay bashing.
IMO, but I’m right. Opposing ss marriage drug him over the finish line :)
In that sense I think it’s fairly profound. It wasn’t that long ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: You think she gave him cover? Or maybe badgered him?
Original Lee
I don’t think it’s a new level of cynicism, John. That would require work and brain power. I think it’s more one of the following:
1) The politician has actually been in favor of gay rights for a while but was afraid to say so until after safely reelected. Same old, same old.
2) The politician has not been in favor of gay rights, but suddenly somebody gave them a pile of money, and the benefactor is in favor of gay rights. More same old, same old.
3) The politician is just saying what someone from an alleged conservative brain trust is telling him/her to say because s/he has secretly been written off as not conservative enough by Koch Bros. et al. Not really new.
4) Your scenario but with less self-awareness.
jayboat
OT- Rachel just reported that the GWBush library will open to the public on the 10th anniversary of the ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’ speech.
Words fail.
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: Cover..
We’ll see soon enough but he had a chance to uphold ACA and passed.
Bruce S
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t have any idea about their stance on gay issues per se, but they have shoveled money to the worst of the worst, because they are aligned with the Crazies on government-hate. It’s irrational – but “libertarianism” doesn’t manifest itself in any pure form in the GOP. Look at Rand Paul being anti-choice. All I’m saying is that the Religious Right isn’t distinct from the Tea Party right – their overlap is far more critical than differences at the margins. As for Adelson, I think a lot of his interest is in the “Christian Zionists”, which is a big deal among the “evangelicals.” Advocacy fo lower taxes on his billions, along with ultra-Zionist zealotry is a wonderful two-fer for a crank like Shelly. Whatever his private feelings about The Gay, I’m sure he has a sense of priorities. I just don’t see this bigotry disappearing among the core constitutents of the GOP rabble-rousers very quickly. These are folks who are driven by nothing so much as their resentments and irrational bigotry – the GOP is reaping what they’ve sowed for decades. Not about to disappear.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Again, his record and his rhetoric on gay issues has been pretty good. Might he turn on a dime? Maybe. But I don’t think so on this one.
Original Lee
Incidentally, and sort of off topic, WTF is the deal with wingnuts being obsessed with Obama family vacations? Dude is POTUS, earns a salary, which is more money than many people earn, plus has other income, so it’s, like, his money.
Or is this part of the whole government bureaucrats are leeches on the body politic and how dare he spend tax dollars on a trip to the Bahamas????
beergoggles
There’s always the chance that they bail on both (or some of them will bail). In both cases the court specifically requested arguments on standing. There’s case law for Hollingsworth v. Perry that, the petitioners, while having standing in state courts can’t show injury to have standing in federal courts. And in MA vs. OPM that just one branch of congress defending a law can’t meet the threshold of injury to meet federal standing either.
Bruce S
@Omnes Omnibus:
Apparently David Koch supports gay marriage. Which is why he’s given millions to empower the most retrograde, homophobic assholes in American political life…
rikyrah
@Original Lee:
hate to come back to race, but here it is..
Black folks aren’t supposed to be able to go abroad to trips to Europe and to Islands, and stay in nice hotels. Black people are only supposed to go to Motel 6.
Fair Economist
I find McCaskill’s stand perfectly explicable. By 2018, pro-equal marriage will probably be a net benefit even in Missouri. Certainly being anti-equal marriage – or being studiously evasive for 6 years – will be a big detriment for a Democrat. She has to support it by then, and the sooner she does it the sooner opponents will get used to her and the sooner supporters will trust her.
Josie
Roberts may be a conservative, but he is not batshit crazy. I doubt that he wants to be on the same side with Scalia on too many arguments. Before the ruling on Obamacare, I said I didn’t think he would agree with Scalia and I was right. It’s a strong possibility that it could happen again. Every time Scalia makes a fool of himself during oral argument, it might drive Roberts further away.
Bruce S
@rikyrah:
How far we’ve come since the days when they were only supposed to clean Motel 6!!! You’ve hit the nail on the head. The irrationality of Obama-hate is so extreme – even more deep-seated and resentment-driven than Clinton-hate that there can only be one rather obvious explanation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruce S: I don’t think the big money guys care enough about the issue to let it affect where they send their money.
Bruce S
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s true – which is why they will fund total nutcases on the ground in hard-core Red districts who carry their water on Crank Fear-Driven Economic Disinformation that serves the 1%. Unless and until “The Base” that is engaged in primaries, etc. shifts significantly, I don’t see a major change among professional party pols. Almost all of the discourse outside of the Religious Right Hymnbook is from people who barely matter and are basically Party has-beens. I didn’t see Ken Mehlman do anything other than enable gay-hate when he had a job with the GOP.
Roger Moore
@Bruce S:
Priorities, man, priorities. David Koch may support gay marriage, but it’s not a priority for him the way low taxes for billionaires is. If he has a choice between a homophobic bigot who will lower his taxes and a marriage equality supporter who will keep them the same, you know where his money is going to go.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Actually, I think you, Bruce S., and I are all say basically the same thing on that. The question is how the societal change on the issue plays out in the GOP base, and whether the PTB try to reach out for conservativish gay voters by moderating on this. And, if so, how many troglodyte voters do they lose by doing it.
Bruce S
@Roger Moore:
Not paying more taxes than poor people is THE equal rights issue for right-wing billionaires.
Bruce S
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s right – it’s a numbers game, but it plays out first and foremost among their base voters who they have privileged in the redistricting – and also in the party’s outreach and messaging priorities regarding who they’ve courted and coddled for decades. Which is why I’m not “optimistic” – although frankly anything that screws up the GOP’s electoral quandries for another decade or so is fine with me. But Congress is a real problem…and they’ve probably got a lock for a while, even if it hurts them everywhere else.
Bruce S
“Roberts may be a conservative, but he is not batshit crazy.”
This is how far the bar has been lowered for our conservative elite with advanced degrees from places other than Oral Roberts University – or who are dependent on a check from MSNBC. “Not batshit crazy” – I think they each deserve a bumper sticker to differentiate them from the GOP horde. First in line – David Brooks and Joe Scarborough! Credit where it’s due…
lol
“Homosexual-Americans are a natural Republican constituency because they also love money more than people” – Reince Priebus in the near future
Ruckus
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I do not think these people know what they are talking about.
That would certainly not be the first time. I’d say probably not even the millionth time.
JGabriel
geg6:
This is my take too. You can’t be the deciding SCOTUS vote to tell teh gayz they can sodomize each other in the privacy of their own homes w/o fearing the state will barge in and arrest them — even in Texas by God — then turn around and tell them they can’t marry each other.
That’s just rude.
.
JGabriel
Josie:
Roberts is, however, deeply Catholic. I could be wrong, but I don’t see him bucking the church on this one.
.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Redshirt: They flipped just as extremely about deficits.
(ETA: I kid. I don’t think they ever gave a shit about deficits one way or the other, but they do find teh ghey extremely threatening, so I think you’re right.)
Gex
A lot of good Republicans and Catholics are getting to learn first hand from my experience what their culture wars have wrought.
It was so easy to play those games, wasn’t it? It wasn’t their life that was being fucked with. There are tax cuts on the line! Not their fault I don’t have a partner to marry when they are so gracious to finally allow me to do so.
I hope they all feel horrible for what they enabled.
Right now this whole thing holds no interest to me. Months ago I would have been excited to see the marriage bans go. It’s good they are going. I just don’t really care very much anymore.
J.D. Rhoades
@Baud:
They could always overturn DOMA while still upholding Prop 8, saying that states have the right to define marriage however they like.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
A better question about the bushes, is there anything they haven’t fucked up?
I’m thinking…
Still thinking…
NO.
Bruce S
I think a good analogy – with credit to Chris Hayes – is that gun-voters didn’t shift their allegiance significantly to the Dems when they began to down-play weapons-ban issues, because the distrust and sense of a “they’re not our people” attitude by Dems – rightly or wrongly – was so embedded. Any shift that the GOP manages to pull off on gay rights will be so obviously opportunistic and patronizing that there’s very little liklihood of making major inroads with the gay vote. Especially since Dems have in this decade been pretty strong in advancing fundamental gay rights – even despite the Clinton-fail in the ’90s. We’ve seen this movie before with all of the BS about “African-American” outreach by the GOP, including high-profile party operatives and cabinet members. Barely made a dent. (The White Right loves their black conservatives far more than black folk do are or likely to.)
CarolDuhart2
@rikyrah: Yes, Obama is only to go to Camp David and Motel 6. But I would go much further than that: I think that they wish he was invisible. Yes, the moochers voted him President, but he’s supposed to be ashamed and invisible of that fact and hide himself away, signing papers and watching television. If Obama locked himself away in the White House, only going out for necessary stuff like the State of the Union speech, then they could pretend he didn’t really exist. They could pretend that it was an illusion/aberration until a real President took office. That nothing has really changed that wasn’t unchangeable/
David Koch
case will be decided on procedure and not on the merits.
they’ll say the appellants didn’t have standing to sue, only the California AG/Governor had that power and since they both declined to defend Prop 8, gay marriage will be upheld, but limited to california.
JGabriel
David Koch:
Yeah, that I can see happenning. Roberts might even join Kennedy on that one. Alternately, Roberts writes an opinion arguing that DOMA shouldn’t have been reached due to lack of standing, while Kennedy joins the sane side of the bench to declare DOMA unconstitutional.
I can see either of those results being a possibility.
.
eemom
I have a suggestion: let’s all just STFU and see what they do.
I mean, critical as this blog is in determining the outcome of most other high stakes deliberations, I’m pretty sure those 9 are not lurkers. (I could be wrong.)
burnspbesq
@Fair Economist:
The only “technical issue” they could use to avoid ruling on the merits in Hollingsworth is standing, and if they rule that the proponents of Proposition 8 don’t have standing to appeal, in the face of an opinion by the California Supreme Court that says that under California law they do, then the District Court opinion becomes the law of the case. I could live with that outcome.
Original Lee
@rikyrah: The people who I have seen posting about this on FB seem to be more upset that Obama is spending any money on personal stuff while at the same time shutting down government services than on the racial aspect. Although maybe these particular wingnuts are deaf to the racist dogwhistles and are just parroting something that’s “fiscal responsibility” sounding.
burnspbesq
Be careful what you wish for. If the Court strikes down DOMA on the basis set forth in the libertarian law profs’ amicus brief, that would essentially reverse about 200 years of precedent on what the Necessary and Proper Clause means. And fundamentally alter the balance of power between the states and the Federal government.
burnspbesq
@ John Cole:
Yes. No one is a deliberately dense about how the judicial process works as you are. If you were a Ph.D. in Political Science and had staked out your ridiculous position in your dissertation, I could understand your obdurate refusal to accept reality. Short of that, I just don’t get it.
TriassicSands
This will be a good test to determine whether Scalia and Alito believe the Constitution or the Pope is the more important authority. A principled conservative would have no difficulty deciding. I expect Tony Calzone and Archbishop Alito to be tormented by the choice.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
@Zifnab:
If the court strikes down DOMA, then the GOP is off the hook for doing anything about it, save to try to pack the Federal benches and SCOTUS which it was doing anyway. And they’ve got another ‘activist judges’ issue to rile up the rubes and get ’em voting their way.
If the court upholds DOMA, then there’ll be pressure from the American Taliban on the GOP to ram through as much gay-bashing legislation as possible through the state houses in the 2-4 year window left before public opinion reaches 65-70% pro-gay marriage. Which would be very bad for the GOP in the long run.
If I’m the GOP leadership, I’m hoping Kennedy votes the way he did on Lawrence vs. Texas.