“Judge Jackson has impeccable credentials and a deep knowledge of the law, but refuses to embrace the judicial philosophy of originalism" (which would unravel the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights, as well as most of the other civil rights protected since the 1950s).
- Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) in an attack on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings.
Republicans have begun to challenge many of the civil rights decisions that have been settled law for over 50 years now, and so deeply woven into our legal system that it's really not something "open to argument".
The rights Republicans challenged the past week included the right to use birth control, access abortion, marriage across racial lines, and same-sex marriage. Rights, which previous Supreme Courts have clearly stated, are guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Constitution. You know - that withered sheet of parchment that every bigot in America claims to respect, but couldn't quote ANY of it, except the Second Amendment. As a fun exercise, get your racist uncle Bill to rattle off at least five of them, and watch the look on his face when he realizes there are more than two.
I said 15 years ago that they would be coming for anything resembling "equality", and once they gained momentum, there would be nothing that wasn't on the table. As soon as they used every tactic they could to block the ACA and sue Obama for daring to give Americans healthcare, I saw the writing on the wall.
I lost so many friends, and pretty much all of my South Carolina hick relatives since then (not that the relatives were any great loss - I don't have that many of them, and they threw my ass in an orphanage while my parents were still warm in the ground), and every one of them fought me at every turn, gaslighting me that it was all a misunderstanding, Republicans didn't really mean it "that way", nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Some were lawyers, and they certainly attempted that disingenuous double-speak that I've now come to recognize in the first syllables by the tone itself. Some were close friends, people I considered 'family', that showed me I would have to make a choice between continued friendship with them, or supporting the cast of wonderful, multi racial, gender and sexual orientation people who had saved my life in one way or another during the course of my life.
Almost all had one thing in common; they were White, straight, and male. And the ones that weren't by and large wished that they were so badly, they were willing to accept "Whites Only" signs to fit in.
I feel vindicated in a way I never wanted to.
God dammit, do I hate being right all the time.
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