Should bigots be able to serve on juries for cases involving discrimination against gay people? Professional whiner and humble fisherman Samuel A. Alito says yes!
That Sam! He calls himself a “practical originalist,” which we guess means it wouldn’t be practical for him to report the origins of gifts from billionaires on his annual Financial Disclosure form, and nobody can make him! He’s a Princetonite, a Bushie, a Yalie, an opera fan, who believes that single-celled fertilized eggs are people, corporations are people, and rights are for traditional conservative heterosexual men, so the rest of you can suck it!
While the Supreme Court has declined to hear a whole lot of stuff recently, like Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood vs. Governor Whitmer and the State of Michigan, and Marge and her House mask fines, when they declined to take up a workplace-discrimination case, Missouri Department of Corrections v. Jean Finney, it was such an Alito-bummer that he pounded out a five-page warning/comment/I TOLD YOU SO ABOUT THE GAYS anyway, because what happened to the bigot’s proper place at the head of society?!
The that which has him “concerned” is about a lady, Jean Finney, who was discriminated against at her job at the Missouri Department of Corrections when she began dating a male co-worker’s ex-wife, who was also a lady. So they were two ladies dating, in a lesbianly kind of way. Co-workers who did not like the lady-dating made her work environment hostile, and it must have been pretty damn hostile for them to award her $275,000, given that everyone already worked in a literal prison.
The part that rustled Alito’s jimmies so intensely was that during voir dire Finney’s lawyers asked the jury pool: “How many of you went to a religious organization growing up where it was taught that people that are homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else because it was a sin with what they did?”
Three jurors who raised their hands insisted they could be impartial anyway, but the judge decided to dismiss them. The eventual jury found for Finney, the Department of Corrections appealed and they lost, and the appeal made it to the open arms of Alito, who apparently only read the “Christian” part of the question and saw a chance to talk about getting the God Squad back together to take on Obergefell, which he is still mad about:
“In this case, the court below reasoned that a person who still holds traditional religious views on questions of sexual morality is presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is a lesbian. That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015), namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be “labeled as bigots and treated as such” by the government. Id., at 741 (dissenting opinion). The opinion of the Court in that case made it clear that the decision should not be used in that way, but I am afraid that this admonition is not being heeded by our society.”
Oh yeah, Obergefell v. Hodges, that was the one where Alito warned us in his dissent,
“those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots, and treated as such by governments, employers and schools.”
Welp, it’s been nine years since Obergefell, Alito’s been out of the recesses of his home plenty. Like to write the Dobbs decision, and to defend himself against taking gifts from billionaires and not reporting them.
The gaypocalypse of everyone being forced-gay-married, or forced to work in a gay wedding cake factory, and go to gay school to study the gay gay gay as Conservatives predicted has not come to pass. Straight people are still getting married to each other, and it’s fine.
But an Alito can dream!
OPEN THREAD.
There's some seriously awesome people here. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜
Home from my visit with the implant dentist. Good news is I like my dentist, Dr. Freddie. Bad news was I need to come up with $400 for a special xray/scan that I had not planned for. Then they have to send me back to my first dentist(student) so he can write up the codes because apparently if the implants are charged through general dentistry it should be covered. Which is important because otherwise it's 5,000. Then I go back to the specialty clinic for them to do the work. That work is scheduled to start April 1st. The dentist puts the implant that is like a socket into the bone. Once that heals, a screw goes into that which will allow the bottom denture to snap on to it.