About the Supreme Court

One of my favorite pieces of post-apocalyptic science fiction is Alas Babylonby Pat Frank. Set in the late 1950s, the novel's hero is Randy Bragg, a mid-30s attorney coasting through life in Florida with a middlin' law practice, a young new romance and a failed political career who must lead his community to survival after a U.S.-Soviet missile exchange. In a flashback to his failed run for state Representative Randy is faced with the question: "How do you stand on the Supreme Court?" At that time, of course, the issue was whether segregation would end whether blacks and whites would get equal access to American rights.

Today, I would like to think that issue is settled, at least on a legal basis. We have a black president, and one of the top ten Republican hopefuls, Ben Carson, is black. Yet we have several equally controversial disagreements in the country, and division amongst the Supreme Court Justices. We have Americans still wondering where they stand on the Supreme Court.

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954) was a 9-0 decision. Loving vs. Virginia, the case that found race-based bans to marriage was also 9-0. That is a symbol of one difference in politics and affairs 50 years ago: consensus. Americans have always had differences of opinion, sometimes very extreme. But it seems that in the past there was a greater emphasis on trying to form consensus and to work together. Since the late 1970's there has been an approach by some in politics to foment dissent rather than to work together. Lewis Powell advocated this approach to American businesses in his letter to the American Chamber of Commerce in 1971. Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove both did so in politics. And the conservative justices, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito on the Supreme Court have taken this approach also.

I find it incredibly irritating that these people insist on regulating everyone's behavior to their standards, as if their way is the only way. There is no aspect of "live and let live" or coexistence to them. I get that you might not want your wife or daughter to have an abortion. So, lock them up and take away the key, but why should you every other woman from that which they wish. You don't like your gay son or lesbian daughter's choice: so go ahead and try to de-program them or whatever. But why you want to make every other gay or lesbian unhappy? You don't want your money to fund abortions. Go ahead and get Congress to defund Planned Parenthood's abortions, but defunding their women's health care (non-abortion) measures is just mean.

Reading the dissenting comments to ObergefellI was struck by that meanness. And perhaps a touch of hysteria. Could that be because the opinions are turning against them? For example, the number of Americans approving of same-sex marriage has gone from 35% in 2001 to 55% in 2015 (statistics and charts from the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life):

Only among Conservatives and older-generations are there majorities opposing same-sex marriage:

Maybe age is the key. Just wait for the dinosaurs to die off. Too bad for the pain they caused.

There used to be an expression "Reasonable men can disagree reasonably." Reading some of the dissenting opinions, I didn't find a shred of reasonableness. One begets the other.