The Religious Reich: Without Lies, What Would They Be?

...Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what.* Via Right Wing Watch (what would I do without you?), comes a clip of some right-wing assholes talking about their strategy for getting SCOTUS to reinstate Prop H8.  In essence, their belief is that if they just bring enough public opinion to bear on their side, the justices will capitulate to the tyranny will of the people.  But really, the best bit is right at the beginning:

The Supreme Court has not, ever, handed down a decision which flew into the face and teeth of a strong moral consensus against it.

Wow, really?  So Brown v Board of Education was totally uncontroversial, with massive public moral consensus on its side, and the National Guard was called in to escort the black students into newly-desegregated schools as an honor guard!  Also, Roe v Wade was and has always been supported by a strong moral consensus, which is why certain segments keep on attacking it and trying to have it overturned.  Oh, and Loving v Virginia was a total no-brainer, despite more than 40 states having anti-miscegenation laws on the books at the time.  No moral consensus against interracial marriage there!  


I mean, really.  This is one of the stupider boldfaced lies I've seen come from the Religious Wrong.  Someone please do correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the function of SCOTUS is to scrutinize contested laws through a Constitutional lens and decide if the law in question is permissible under the Constitution, yes?  Not to have a popularity contest and say "Well, most people feel strongly against this, so we'll have to rule against it."  The popularity-contest part is the voting which enacts the law; SCOTUS is supposed to stand independent of public opinion and decide pure questions of the Constitutionality of the laws.  Sure, there's a "moral consensus" against same-gender marriage, although it's not such a strong one as they'd like to claim, and its hold has been diminishing considerably with the passage of time.  And with that moral consensus, they won the popularity contest that is voting, and enacted their law.  That part has already been decided.  The question now is not whether it's popular or in step with a "moral consensus", but whether it abides by the strictures of the Constitution.  Which Judge Walker held it did not, and which is the question the 9th Circuit Court and, eventually, SCOTUS will be deciding on, not whether or not there's a "moral consensus" about the issue.


No wonder they're getting all the wrong answers here.  They're asking the wrong questions.



*Gamer joke; from a Zero Punctuation review for Dragon Age in which Yahtzee asked, "What would a Bioware RPG be without text?  Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what."