Coping with the conservative patriarchy

The end of this week brought some depressing news to those who want equity under the law...who want both minority races and gender affirmations to protect our lives. Thus the patriarchy continues to control legal avenues, at least for now. It is in its death throws, as climate change will wipe the ancient legal models of definining our lives away with the expected crisis-es (crisies?). 

Conscious people will show compassion, embrace the needs of all, support those whose rights and places of belonging were washed away with floods, offer food and shelter to those whose homes burned or whose air was unbreatheable with the smokes of those wildfires each summer. The crisises of ashes is the place where the phoenix will again rise, reborn from those ashes, flying with power to give wisdom.

I am re-reading Robertson Work's book, Compassionate Civilization. He is more than a visionary, and has practical advice for groups of people working for common good.

This week the conservative Supreme Court has made more decisions that take away people's rights, and that make lives harder for them. Where they got the idea that this serves the law, I'm not sure. They certainly serve the GOP.

First (June 29, 2023) both Harvard and UNC were to stop using affirmative action in admissions...as are all institutions which have any federal funding for the students or research programs.

Those justices who dissented—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—pointed to the profound racial discrimination that continued after the Civil War and insist that the law has the power to address that discrimination in order to achieve the equality promised by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Jackson said:

 “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

In her concurring opinion concerning the UNC case, Jackson noted that “[g]ulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles—the ‘self-evident’ truth that all of us are created equal.” 

SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson, Leters from an American June 29, 2023

Then the Supremes (June 30, 2023) blocked the Biden plan to forgive student loan debts that amassed during the Covid crisis.

Justice Elena Kagan described the majority's decision to strike down Biden's student loan as an overreach, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance," it begins.

And....limits LBGTQ rights by...

The Supreme Court Friday (June 30, 2023) ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections.

The 6-3 decision was penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Lorie Smith, who runs a company called 303 Creative, sought to expand her business into the area of weddings and wrote a webpage explaining why she won’t create websites for same-sex couple. But under a Colorado public accommodations law, she said she cannot post the statement because the state considers it illegal.

The ruling – rooted in free speech grounds – will pierce state public accommodation laws for those businesses who sell so-called “expressive” goods. It is the latest victory for religious conservatives at the high court and will alarm critics who fear the current court is setting its sights on overturning the 2015 marriage case.

Gorsuch wrote that “the First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.” He said Colorado sought to “deny that promise.”

SOURCE: CNN

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