![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Karma is a bitch.
Jun. 26th, 2013 03:01 pm"Things have changed dramatically."
- Chief Justice Roberts, justifying the majority's finding that the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional.
I heard that one-line piece of pithiness from that day's bad decision, and said, I think there's hope. Because if the court applies that same reasoning to the Defense of Marriage Act, it would reach the same result and rule THAT to be unconstitutional.
And that's exactly what the Court (if not with the concurrence of Chief Justice Roberts) did today in sending that sucker to the scrap heap of history.
Here, on the other hand, is what the Chief Justice of our nation said about why he wanted to uphold DOMA today after reversing the Voting Rights Act yesterday:
When it became clear that changes in state law might one day alter that balance, DOMA’s definitional section was enacted to ensure that state-level experimentation did not automatically alter the basic operation of federal law, unless and until Congress made the further judgment to do so on its own. That is not animus—just stabilizing prudence.
So icky gay people justify "prudence" but icky black voters don't. Well played, Johnny, well played.
Still, I'll take today- where majorities threw out that 1996 pandering to fundies and rejected California's Prop 8 (although not in a precedent-setting way). It adds one more state to the 21st century and throws out a punitive and spiteful slap at 10 percent of our population (more if you count their families and allies).
I'm prouder to be an American than I was a day ago.
- Chief Justice Roberts, justifying the majority's finding that the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional.
I heard that one-line piece of pithiness from that day's bad decision, and said, I think there's hope. Because if the court applies that same reasoning to the Defense of Marriage Act, it would reach the same result and rule THAT to be unconstitutional.
And that's exactly what the Court (if not with the concurrence of Chief Justice Roberts) did today in sending that sucker to the scrap heap of history.
Here, on the other hand, is what the Chief Justice of our nation said about why he wanted to uphold DOMA today after reversing the Voting Rights Act yesterday:
When it became clear that changes in state law might one day alter that balance, DOMA’s definitional section was enacted to ensure that state-level experimentation did not automatically alter the basic operation of federal law, unless and until Congress made the further judgment to do so on its own. That is not animus—just stabilizing prudence.
So icky gay people justify "prudence" but icky black voters don't. Well played, Johnny, well played.
Still, I'll take today- where majorities threw out that 1996 pandering to fundies and rejected California's Prop 8 (although not in a precedent-setting way). It adds one more state to the 21st century and throws out a punitive and spiteful slap at 10 percent of our population (more if you count their families and allies).
I'm prouder to be an American than I was a day ago.