The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Mike Sweet column
To those who don't believe in either proposition -- a group that includes the court's dissenting members -- the rulings not only forced them all to eat crow, it poured Tabasco on their ulcers.
The first surprise came as two of the court's five conservatives jumped ship and joined the four reliable liberals in trampling yet another lame right wing attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act.
Like adolescent children repeating a bad locker room joke, its sniveling opponents have ceaselessly mocked the ACA as "Obamacare." After 60 failed attempts by the
Much credit for upholding the ACA goes to
The majority of six ruled that
Not so, the court ruled.
Had the court's conservative Scrooges prevailed, 6 million recipients of federal subsidies would be cast immediately into medical limbo. They live in the 34 conservative states (like
Some Republicans vow to keep alive their sick crusade to overturn a law that seeks to provide basic health care for all.
They draw hope and energy from Justice
Alternately fancying himself as
Scalia not quite facetiously declared the law should now be called SCOTUScare (the acronym for supreme court.
Scalia also referred to the logic of the majority view as "jiggery-pokery" and "pure applesauce."
He went on and on with his vitriol. His appetite for criticizing common decency is insatiable. He and
Watching Scalia squirm when he doesn't get his way is pure pleasure.
He was still fussing and fuming over Obamacare when the second decision to gall him came down from on high.
On an even narrower 5-4 ruling on a subject conservatives despise even more than health care for everyone, the court ruled that gay marriage is constitutional throughout the land.
It was only acknowledging what fair- minded Americans already accepted not only as right but inevitable.
Marriage between gay and lesbian couples already was legal in 36 states and the
It was a noble decision which the religious and political right punished by impeaching three of the justices up for retention that year. Those evil perpetrators of willful bigotry and vindictiveness against honest judges have now been vilified by five reasonable members of the highest court in the land. May they sulk in perpetuity.
The 14 states holding out for discrimination will now have to issue licenses for gays and lesbians to marry. Those who refuse -- one homophobic clerk in
Besides, homophobes can still practice bigotry in the sanctity of their churches. Acknowledging the separation of church and state, the court's decision doesn't require religion to abandon discrimination. But government must. Equality demands it.
Supporting that concept, the normally conservative
"The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just," he wrote, "but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.
"With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter."
In his rejection of an absolute right to marry,
"Just who do we think we are?" to change that, he asked.
The answer is we are a democratic society in the 21st century, where equality under the law has to mean something. Or mean nothing.
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