The Supreme Court justice is back to complaining about LGBTQ people in a recent opinion from the court.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is complaining that people who oppose homosexuality were being unfairly branded as bigots, despite that being a dictionary definition of bigotry.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a case about whether it is legal to exclude potential jurors based on their religion. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Jean Finney, who is lesbian, against her longtime employer, the Missouri Department of Corrections, for workplace discrimination and retaliation due to her sexuality. During jury selection for the trial, which Finney won, her lawyer asked the judge to remove three jurors who had expressed beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. Finney’s lawyer argued their religious beliefs would bias them against LGBTQ people.
The state of Missouri appealed the decision, arguing that the jury selection process had been discriminatory on religious grounds. An appeals court sided with Finney, ruling the jurors had been eliminated due to their beliefs about homosexuality, not because they were Christians. Missouri appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which declined Tuesday to hear the case.
In a statement, Alito said he agreed with the decision not to hear the lawsuit, but warned he felt the case was a harbinger of greater danger.
The appeals court ruling “exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges,” Alitio wrote, referring to the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized marriage equality.
“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,” he said. “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 this admonition is not being heeded by our society.”
I know that Alito doesn’t ever do anything in good faith, but I can see how his argument has validity if made in good faith. I have plenty of Christian friends who absolutely support gay rights because, as a Christian, they feel that their job is to live through Christ and support their fellow Christians. They feel that homosexuality is a sin, but no more of a sin than original sin, so anyone who was ever birthed starts on a level playing field. Anything beyond that, to them, is for God to sort out.
These are the kind of people who believe that you save someone’s soul by living as a good person and if someone else wants to emulate that, they can follow Christ in kind. If it takes an invisible sky-man to help these people make good choices, then sure, Christian it up, baby.
So, once again, if the argument were being made in good faith, I could see that Obergefell v Hodges, which boils down to “someone whose bigotry is based on religion is still a bigot,” could be misconstrued into “religious people can be treated as bigots.” It’s a squares and rectangles sorta thing.
So, I think that maybe what Alito is saying is that he’s afraid that labeling someone who says, “yeah, I’m a bigot cuz I’m a Christian,” as a bigot could accidentally lead to “get that bigot out of here because they’re Christian,” and then that would lead to a new need for anti-discrimination laws. But, once again, that assumption would require giving Alito far more credit than he deserves.
Not for nothing guy but you know good and well that argument is not being made in good faith, he never makes arguments in good faith, and frankly they’re not even being excluded from the jury because they’re Christian but because they’re exclusively anti-homosexual stance. So I feel like your entire comment was moot.
I feel that that comment adds some nuance to the discussion, so I wouldn’t call it ‘moot’ myself.
Yes, you’re right that I know good and well that he never makes arguments in good faith, that’s why I said it multiple times. I’m not sure that you read the whole comment, because it wasn’t about defending the indefensible. It was about ensuring that while we all deliver Alito a well-deserved “fuck you,” we have to also say, “except the part about not discriminating against religion. People can read whatever book they want.”
The problem is, as you already noted, the part about not discriminating against religion is specious to begin with. As we both pointed out that’s a bad faith argument. It it wasn’t occurring. We already have many laws protecting against that. The mere idea that we’re acknowledging he has any point when he clearly doesn’t legitimizes his bigoted stance.
I’m not sure that I see it that way, but I also can’t argue with your concern. Do you think if a more progressive or less lying-sack-of-shit person had said something similar that it would have more validity as a caution to not overcorrect into crossing boundaries? I’m not sure if “validity” is the right word since everything Alito says it’s invalidated by his malevolence.
Eta: perhaps I’m looking at this wrong and not giving people their proper benefit of the doubt. There might be more nuance than my “progressive person” question allows. Maybe a more progressive person wouldn’t be saying any of this in the first place?
This is the problem. This line of reasoning is only a step or two removed from “therefore homosexuality must be stopped.” It is not a far leap from one to the next, and fundigelicals do it all the time.
But the main issue that Alito has a problem with is not that the religious will be mistreated because they’re Christians—he knows that’s a strawman; they’ve been harping on Christian Persecution™ for decades, yet they remain highly influential and prosperous. No, the problem is that society is fundamentally moving on from his religion, and his particular brand of religion has chosen to die on this hill, rather than adapt with the religious progressives.
He seems to be arguing, without rational warrant, that his religion is a precondition for society, not that religion can be a component of society, and that society will crumble without the superstition he prescribes. He wants us to just assume that his religion is axiomatically true without providing evidence for his presuppositions.
The age of Christians being the dominant force in the US is ending (if we can avoid theocracy/fascism), and people like Alito are doing everything they can to hold onto that position of power.
Oh, I absolutely agree and feel people are way too involved in other people’s lives. Like I said numerous times, I don’t think Alito does anything in good faith, but there’s still something to be learned from what comes out of his shit-filled mouth. Just like the mentally deficient people who say “Jeebus tells me you can’t be gay,” because they heard someone tell them it’s written in a book, there are mentally deficient people who will say, “you can’t serve on a court because you take advice from a book.”
So, really, the right phrasing of the ruling should say “bigots can’t serve on courts that will be swayed by their bigotry,” but then Alito would write himself out of a job, so he’s gotta frame the laws around his bigoted ass.
If someone was fired from their job because of their race, and a potential juror on the case expressed their religious belief that the “mixing of races” is a sin (was a very common religious belief many people justified on the basis of their version of Christianity, and a belief many in the country still hold unfortunately), they should be thrown off that jury and rightfully so. This is no different. And don’t start with any of this “well they don’t think being gay is a sin just acting on it is a sin” nonsense, would be like saying being black isn’t a sin, just marrying outside your race or using the same water fountains as other races is a sin.
People who hold bigoted beliefs about their fellow Americans have no place on a jury for a case involving them, especially in a discrimination case, whether they believe their bigotry is rooted in religion or anything else.
The fact that Samuel Alito thinks they do belong on juries in cases like this says everything you need to know about him. He doesn’t think gay people deserve the same rights as everyone else, and he believes religious people (specifically his version of Christianity) have a right to use the law to trample the rights of others. Furthermore, he views the denial of the ability to trample other people’s rights he doesn’t like as some sort of discrimination against himself, in some kind of crazy warped logic.
Please don’t put words in my mouth to defend your argument, I never said anything about acting on gay desires being a sin. I said that there exists people who believe that everyone is born a sinner, which I still don’t get, and that they can’t judge their fellow humans for homosexuality because it’s no more of a sin than being born a human.
The rest of your argument mostly parrots what I said, except at some point, you seemed to get upset and came dangerously close to saying that religious people are bigots. The point I was making was that while we need to keep in mind that Alito is a bigot, we have to also keep in mind that not all members of his book club are bigots.
Some religious people are bigots, certainly not all though. And you don’t need to be religious to have a bigoted viewpoint. But bigotry is exactly my point, I was not trying to tip toe around it. Saying the belief is religious doesn’t make it right, and it’s still bigotry. Just as in the same way people who used religion to discriminate on the basis of race (and some still do) were bigots too.
If someone who was Christian was in a case suing because they believed they were fired for their religion, and a potential juror said they thought Christians were evil, they’d be off that jury in a second without anyone batting an eye. And I’d agree they absolutely should not be on that jury. In none of these cases should jurors who hold bigoted beliefs about the issue at hand be allowed on a jury.
Agreed. I’m glad we’re both bigoted against bigots.