Gay marriage ruling about to come down

[BmorePat87]

(06-28-2015, 08:40 PM)bfine32 Wrote: The shallow public just saw the word "Slavery" and lost their minds. He also used the example of prisoners in internment camps and nobody gave 2 damns about that. 

If you do not see see why Kennedy using the word dignity in his majority opinion would cause (make any difference) Thomas to bring it up in his dissent, then I have to question if you understand the meaning of a dissent.

I have spent many hours on this very board with folks instructing me about how the  Constitution does not "give" you anything. Now when Thomas agrees in his dissent of Kennedy's love letter (aka Majority Opinion); folks execute a 180.

 What was your opinion of Kennedy's Majority Opinion?

My guess would be that we spend more time remembering the immorality behind slavery and have developed a national guilt around it while we often do not even acknowledge the fact that we threw thousands of Americans into internment camps when we remember WWII. Slavery is also much worse. That and there are more people in this country whose ancestors were directly affected by slavery than there are people who were affected by internment.

Some thoughts. I'm not really outraged at what he said. I understand the philosophy behind it and, while I disagree, I don't think it was inflammatory.

As for the question posed to Matt, I thought Kennedy was dead on when he repeatedly said that the right to marry is protected by the Constitution. He said that the "Court has long held that the right to marriage is protected by the Constitution". He then goes on to say that the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, explaining that this promise that our rights won't be infringed upon means the government cannot deny this right of marriage to same sex couples.

Justice Thomas disagrees with the notion that a guarantee of due process means that the government has to protect the right for same sex couples marry the same way it has to protect it with opposite sex couples. He sees this use of due process as "creating" a right, something Kennedy does not say. Thomas has a philosophical issue with substantive due process versus procedural due process. So, people are not executing a 180, but rather agreeing with Kennedy that this right is protected and disagreeing with Thomas that this right is being created. The majority opinion didn't suggest that this right was just now created, only the dissenting opinions have.