Month: June 2013

Let the parsing begin. A legal reader writes:

The Kennedy opinion in Windsor is, I think, deliberately obscure and muddled in its rationale(s), owing to his obvious — and quite laudable — design, namely, to point the way for other states and lower courts, but to ensure that they have, say, five years to work it out, rather than five months. (As an aside, I dare say that that strategy might not have been possible without the standing argument in Perry that the Court largely derived from Walter Dellinger’s brief — an argument that Kennedy himself nominally rejected, but that I’d wager he was relieved to see, for it paved the way for him to do what he did.)

But make no mistake: The writing is on the wall as to what Kennedy is prepared to do when he decides the time is right. The most significant sentence in the Windsor opinion is the very first one in the merits section, which has not received remotely the attention it warrants: “When at first Windsor and Spyer longed to marry, neither New York nor any other State granted them that right.”

“Longed to marry” . . . in a majority opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States!

Of course, one can never be too sure. But as long as Anthony Kennedy remains the pivotal vote on the Court, is there serious doubt about what the Court will do when it finally confronts the core marriage question? Indeed, one might even imagine the eventual opinion of the Court, per Kennedy, channeling your reaction last evening: “Marriage is not a political act; it’s a human one. It is based on love, before it is rooted in law. Same-sex marriages have always existed because the human heart has always existed in complicated, beautiful and strange ways.”

Jeffrey Rosen wonders if other Justices prevented Kennedy from ruling on the merits on Prop 8:

Joined by the unusual lineup of Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor, he insisted that the challengers of Prop 8 should have their day in Court. But if the liberal justices were confident that Kennedy would join them in striking down Prop 8, wouldn’t they have joined him in finding that the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to hear the case? Please tell me if you disagree, but my surmise is either that the liberal justices weren’t confident that they could get Kennedy’s vote or that he made clear his willingness to uphold Prop 8.

A Kennedy vote against gay marriage would be surprising, and hard to reconcile with his obviously heartfelt and passionate defense of the equal dignity of gays and lesbians in the DOMA case. And yet at the oral argument, he was obviously conflicted about Perry, asking aloud why the Court had taken the case to begin with. Since it takes four votes to hear a case, is it possible that the Court voted to hear Perry over Kennedy’s objection but that, once he faced the need to decide, he wasn’t ready to vote for gay marriage, even on narrow grounds? Once again, that would seem surprising in light of his previous opinions. (Because her vote wasn’t necessary to dismiss the case, Justice Sotomayor was willing to join Kennedy, Thomas and Alito in making clear she would have decided the case on the merits.)

Scott Lemieux weighs in:

The most obvious way of interpreting the vote lineup, which doesn’t map on to the typical preferences of a majority of justices on either standing or equal protection law, is that nobody trusted Kennedy on the merits. I could find no hint in either Kennedy’s majority opinion in Windsor or his dissent in Perry of how he would have ruled if compelled to consider the merits. This question will simply remain open for the time being.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Justin Peters reacts to news of a mother being tried for murder because her daughter shot herself:

On Sunday a 5-year-old New Orleans girl shot and killed herself with a .38-caliber revolver while her mother was out at the store. On Monday authorities in New Orleans announced that the mother, 28-year-old Laderika Smith, would be charged with second-degree murder—an offense that, under Louisiana state law, is punishable by life imprisonment at hard labor with no chance of parole. Yesterday I wrote that I wasn’t yet sure what to think about the charges against Smith. Now, I’m sure: This is ridiculously severe. Justice will not be served if Smith is convicted.

There’s negligence and then there’s murder. McArdle chimes in:

How much added deterrence do we get from telling parents that if their kid finds a gun and shoots themselves (or a sibling), that parent will go to jail? Let me submit that the answer is “virtually none”. Oh, sure, there are a handful of sociopathic, mentally ill, or drug addicted parents who don’t care if their kid gets shot, but we’re mostly describing people sufficiently addled that very little will deter them from anything. All the rest of the parents are internally sobbing with anguish at the mere passing thought that something could happen to their darling child.

A reader does some math:

Once the Ninth Circuit stay is lifted in California, some 97 million Americans will live in a state with marriage equality, just under one-third of the US population. In the rest of 2013 and 2014, we can likely bring marriage equality to Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon – adding another 47 million. That leaves us about 9 million shy of a majority. All we’d need is Ohio or Pennsylvania and then a majority of Americans would live in states with marriage equality. Massachusetts became the first state to gain marriage equality only in 2003, just ten years ago. If we can bring over those states above in the next five years, we will have achieved majority marriage equality in only 15 years.

In 1947, California started the end of anti-miscegenation laws with a decision by its Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711. By the time of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), some 20 years had passed. I bet the US Supreme Court bans anti-marriage equality laws less than five years from now, which means we will have won our victory slightly faster than those fighting for racial equality won their fight in this arena.

Not bad for a group of sissies.

Nate Silver has the global numbers. Another sends the above image:

After reading that the Windsor decision affects 13 states (including California with Hollingsworth), I thought maybe the gay pride movement should consider a new flag.

Cowen explains why certain countries’ cuisines have spread worldwide while others haven’t:

Consider how cooking evolves: It starts in the home and then eventually spreads to restaurants and on to cookbooks, along the way transforming a recipe from oral tradition to commercialized product. In the home, recipes are often transmitted from grandmother to mother, or from father to son, or simply by watching and participating. I’ve seen this in rural Mexico, for instance, when an older daughter teaches her younger sister how to pat tortillas the right way. When societies get richer, you start to see restaurants, a form of specialization like auto mechanics or tailors (see: Adam Smith on the division of labor). Restaurants require that strangers — other cooks — be taught the process. That means simplifying or standardizing ingredients so they’re easier to work with and, in many cases, available year-round. This, of course, means writing down the recipe. Once a dish reaches these commercial milestones, cookbooks will follow.

Thai cuisine hit U.S. shores in the late 1960s, thanks to American troops on R&R in Bangkok during the Vietnam War who brought the taste home, and it wasn’t long before restaurants followed. Soon, a booming economy and international trade made it a whole lot easier to find galangal and lemongrass, which allowed Thai restaurants to thrive. Today, any major U.S. city has at least a half-dozen places where you can find a decent green chicken curry. And once a cuisine proliferates, people want to be able to cook it at home.

Nate Silver updates his chart on it:

By August, there will be about 585 million people living in countries or jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal. That is roughly double the 289 million people living in such places in August 2012.

A reader writes:

First, I hope you’re enjoying a well-deserved celebration of the DOMA ruling. Dignity, indeed.

Second, as I’m sure many other readers have told you, something important happened in Texas [Tuesday] night.  On one level it was the defeat of a bill (that was questionably constitutional) designed to limit women’s access to abortion.  The defeat came, as I’m sure you’ve heard, on the heels of an 11-hour filibuster – the good ole fashioned kind.  On another, it viscerally demonstrated several themes you cover on the blog.

First, the new media coverage of this was amazing: the Texas Tribune, with its live stream/blog and Twitter, was about the only place to get news, since the cable networks were silent.  Second, the epistemic closure of the Texas GOP is well-known and documented, but here it was live-streamed to almost 200,000 people – and the Republican senators still lied, obfuscated, and ignored the rules in an attempt to get their bill passed.  This defeat is a huge punch in the gut for Perry, Dewhurst (the lieutenant governor pondering a run for Cornyn’s seat after losing to Cruz in the primaries), and the GOP more generally.  Texas turning purple, indeed.

It was also a moment for several Democratic senators to get their names and stories out there, not the least of whom is Wendy Davis, who spoke for 11 hours.  Third, thousands of people showed up in support of the filibuster and those in the gallery are responsible for actually making the final vote impossible by screaming for 15 minutes.  While that may insult the rules of order, Dewhurst and Duncan (who had taken the chair after an appeal of one of Dewhurst’s decisions) had long gone down that road.  And those thousands of people dwarfed those who showed up in support of the bill.  Coming on the heels of 10,000 marching in March to return funding to schools, people showing up in the capitol to participate in democracy is amazingly powerful.

On a personal note, it was amazing to watch the last three hours of the special session.  As a Catholic, the hypocrisy of the pro-life GOP (in a state that will execute its 500th prisoner since 1976 tonight; 261 of those under Rick Perry) is galling and this bill is just one more way they were trying to make it impossible to be a poor, pregnant woman while wrapping themselves in the rhetoric of life.  So much for the preferential option for the poor.  To see their bill picked apart by Sen. Davis, their misogynist perspective revealed by Sen. Van de Putt, and their epistemic closure on display to the public was so heartening.

I hope after the high of the DOMA ruling wears off you’ll throw a little attention toward Texas.

Update from a reader, who clarifies:

The bill was not “defeated”. Instead, a vote was prevented from happening before time was up on a special session. Perry called a second special session to open on July 1st to try again.

 
Well, tonight I really am too plastered to write this. You will, I hope, forgive me. So let me end today with a quote that has long inspired me. It’s from Hannah Arendt, in Dissent, in 1959:

“The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.”

And as of today, the pursuit of happiness enlarged its scope.