The line from Kennedy to Trump. . and from democracy to the reeducation camp. Judicial blunderng and its impact.

 Soviet forced labor.  Thank goodness you can't get in trouble for just having views, even unexpressed ones, here. Right?

When the nation was leading up the United States Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell, and while the matter was still in the democratic arena here people had an opportunity to express their opinions, it was often stated that there was no kind of threat at all poised by a governmental declaration recognizing same sex marriage as all that meant is that people who held what was a minority view of the legitimacy of that being a recognizable institution would be able to obtain that status and nothing more.

That is, while it would mean that such couples were legally recognized as spouses, its proponents declared that would not require any private individual to violate their conscience, whether that conscience was formed by faith, tradition, or philosophy, but rather the legal status would be recognized.  Opponents of the movement, who were more successful than not in the democratic arena, who claimed that the backers of the movement would demand recognition from everyone, and then ultimately demand the destruction of marriage itself, were scoffed at as alarmists.

No matter what the truth, or inaccuracy, of that might have been in the legislative arena, we received instead the judicial jumping of the gun by Anthony Kennedy and his fellow travelers and we may now meet Col Leland B.H. Bohannon, United States Air Force.

Col. Bohannon was, until very recently the head of the Air Force Inspection Agency (I have no idea what that is) at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.  He's now been relieved and his Air Force career is as good as over.  And the reason he was believed was for not signing a congratulations letter to the "spouse" of an NCO who was retiring.

Now, if that seems odd, we'll note that there's no official requirement in the Air Force that a commanding officer sign any such, well let's admit it, nice but namby pamby letter to the spouses of retiring NCOs nor should there be.  That would be dumb.  That's silly and the Air Force presumably has much more serious things to do.  Such a letter has just about as much meaning as the letter wishing you a happy birthday from your bank.  I don't even know why a commanding officer should have any particular knowledge about who is retiring and who isn't, and likely they often don't, but the service is fully of silly traditions that have little to do with anything.  This one, however, had a lot to do with political correctness and a movement to shut people up now that the Supreme Court has ruled.  

And that, dear reader, shows why the Supreme Court does the nation a huge disservice when it seeks to at as the Platonic Council of Elders than a court of law.  And its' not the only example.

But to complete this example, the NCO's "spouse" was the same gender as the NCO.  I.e., it was a same gender marriage, if you accept that marriage is defined by the United States Supreme Court, just like the origin of life is, rather than by nature or a natural law.  Lt. Col. Bohannon did not accept that as his conscience was formed by a religious faith that holds the opposite tenant.

I don't know what religious faith Bohannon holds, and its actually not important for this discussion. In order to hold this particular religious belief he could be a serious Protestant Christian of any number of denominations, or a Catholic, Orthodox, traditional Jew, or Muslim.  No idea.  He wouldn't have to have any faith at all to hold the same idea for philosophic reasons as many others have, including some notable European homosexuals who hold the same idea.  Indeed, it was the majority belief of most Americans up until the judicial coup that forced the law in the opposite direction just two years ago.

And Bohannon wasn't in anyone's face about it and his action was neither unthinking, nor would I regard it as particularly courageous.  When the matter came up he sought an exception under a new, and I'd hold absurd, Air Force PC system in which an officer who has serious religious objections can seek a regulatory exception to such an action (I'd hold if you have serious religious or philosophic objections the law should just presume your action is okay). This meant submitting his petition to the local Chaplin's office and the local JAG, both of whom apparently wimped out and returned the petition with no action even though the regulation doesn't provide for no action.  Faced with the wimpy noodle response of the Chaplin's office and the JAG office he chose to forgo signing and a junior officer did.

And then the offended NCO filed a complaint that he/she was discriminated against and the Colonel was relieved.  

A legal action has been filed.

No matter what the result is, I'd wager this officer is done for, even though he was apparently on the verge of being promoted to Brigadier General.

Now, this is a lesson in a simple fact.  When the United States Supreme Court confuses its role in a controversial matter with being the Oracles Of Black Robed Wisdom, rather than a court of law, they make matters infinitely worse. What occurs is that the parties holding a controversial view that they cannot convince the majority of latch on to the decision, no matter what they said they'd do before and scream that the matter is decided and anyone who disagrees with them is a bigot.  That's now exactly what's happening all over.  If you read the Stars and Stripes article on this the commenters won't let any air into the conversation at all "he's a bigot!" is their scream.

Well, that view doesn't make him bigoted at all.  And the Supreme Court having decided the issue doesn't really decide it in the larger sense.  People who thought it wold had to be complete and totally deluded.  Indeed, I noted two years ago when the legal train wreck of Obergefell was decided that:

The common wisdom right now is that the public will now accept this, where it hadn't.  I doubt it will, and already those who appeared defeated are beginning to resist and rally, with proposals that will have to be taken seriously in short order.  A real reaction is likely to be a massive level of contempt for a Court which was already not particularly well liked by much of the nation, and which now shows itself capable of acting in a Napoleonic fashion.  Like the little emperor, who marched on Europe in the name of liberal ideals, liberty, quality and fraternity, five robed emperors, likewise sitting for life, have decreed that legislatures don't matter in something in which they very much do. And, just like the little emperor, these emperors amazingly do so in interrupting what was seemingly a trend in the same direction they went anyhow.  They clearly need not have done it under the law, and even if they felt their decision to be a socially correct one, they could have waited for it to unfold.  A person doesn't need to be hasty in overturning a norm that's as old as human history.

But what it has done is to really help split the country.  Prior to the decision this was in the legislatures and we had a majority in Congress that did not support it and a President that said he didn't.  When the Court decided the matter the President lit up the White House in the colors of the controversial movement and the Democrats overnight were all for it.  A little over a year later the nation elected a populist President further to the right than the GOP by quite some margin who held a lot of views on all sorts of things in open contempt.  Anthony Kennedy to Donald Trump might not be a straight line, but it's a line, and a short one.

 This guy. . . . 

in no small part elected this one.

Which brings us to abortion.

Eh?

It does.  Earlier on Obergefell I've repeatedly cited to the Court's old decision in Roe v. Wade as an example of judicial blundering.  It is, and a lesson should be learned. The Roe decision is incredibly stupid and it was at the time. The entire concept that nine lawyers can decide when life begins is blisteringly arrogant.  It held philosophy and tradition in contempt. And it also held scientific progress in contempt.

Over time, that became apparent to more and more people  that the latter proposition was absurd. And indeed, we've bizarrely been advancing rapidly toward the point at which babies who can be legally aborted will also be viable, with huge medical assistance, outside the womb.  Because of medical advances the "trimester" legal system that the Supreme Court devised is now scientifically absurd and nobody really tries to defend it.  The debate, therefore, has reduced on the pro decision side to mostly yelling at the opponents and all pretenses to maintaining a rational debate are gone as there's no rational debate to be had. The clear path is that over time the original scientific argument, human life must begin at conception, is pretty clearly correct.

As with the debate, and yes there is one, on same gender marriage, those with traditional religious views have been in the forefront of those who have refused to accept the decision.  Missed in all of this is that religious and philosophy are very closely linked and if properly understood continues of the same basic discipline. They seek to understand the nature of things by the obvious physical nature.  That there is a nature of things beyond the mere physical nature is accepted by all peoples of all types everywhere, even if they don't agree on what it is. This has played an interesting and missed part of the abortion debate and will play an increasing one in the debate on same gender marriage. I.e., what are we and what does that mean?

The what are we and what does that mean question lead an increasing number of fairly secular people to reject abortion and that's lead to the overall view that its generally wrong.  In spite of that, the proponents of that, mostly in the 1970s left, scream as if everyone who is opposed to it is a religious fanatic, which in their view would generally be anyone with any religion at all.  In reality, however, a large number of the people who've come to be opposed to it are not in that category at all and during the last two decades to quite well known atheists were amongst those who flat out regarded is as wrong.  That's pretty telling. I suspect that the same curve will occur here as this gets debated as at the end of the day basic biology makes the concept of same sex permanent unions rather strained and the concept that the state must create a fiction that they're identical to mixed gender permanent unions cannot be really supported without a whole pile of footnotes that require all sorts of other actions in order to attempt approaching that being true.

Indeed, because that is true, the judicial decision doesn't support the basic facts, its is guaranteed that the only way that the court's decisions can be upheld, in both instances, is by forcing an entire pile of additional actions against people's basic beliefs and desires.  Every such action makes the original decision all the more strained and disliked and makes the original pronouncement all the more a lie.  It's already clear that Anthony Kennedy's absurd position that this wouldn't impact people who disagreed with it all is a colossal whopper.  The Court will be hearing a decision this term where a Colorado Commission, which for all the world is bizarrely reminiscent of bodies that existed in Communist states, told a baker, of all things, who he must bake for.  That's just flat out absurd, but that's going to be heard by the court.

Equally absurd is a military where an officer who was informed by his faith reached a difficult decision, after trying to get help from the military through official processes, on whether or not his signature on a card ratified the truth of the essence of a same gender marriage, something that he does not personally believe in.  It has nothing to do with aircraft or missiles and yet he's lost his position because he does not hold what many to be hold, but Anthony Kennedy holds, to be true.  His action didn't impact anything official at all.  Basically, he's been told that he can't hold his personal religious beliefs.  For those who simply disagree with Obergefell for reasons of biology or philosophy there's not even a theoretical out, as there at least was for those who could base their actions, or maybe not, on a religious basis.

But then, the nation  has been struggling for over forty years with a legal decision that was scientifically bankrupt and which has long ago quite being taken seriously as a matter of informed law.

All of which shows how different these cases are from true civil rights cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education, in spite of claims to the opposite. It is not that Brown was immediately accepted, quite the opposite, but it was supported by nature.  It came to be accepted by the population as nature always wins.  Race based prejudice, while apparently something of a human instinct, is always ultimately unnatural and that was always the flaw in American racism.  All the court really did, in a case like Brown or Loving v. Virginia is get around to noticing what people already had.

Likewise, the same is true of Supreme Court cases that created a true right of privacy, even though that's been misunderstood.  It isn't that people actually ratify every act that takes place behind closed doors, its rather that they just know that people are flawed in all sorts of degrees and we ought not to really bother with policing stuff that isn't really more widely harmful.  In regards to homosexuality most people, long ago, accepted that they'd accept private behavior, but that doesn't mean that have ever held that all sexual behavior comports with the ordered natural one.  And that's why the real impact of Obergefell will be similar to Roe's, decades of animosity and hostile debate and legal actions. And all because the Supreme Court just can't stand to let trends of that type develop where they will and instead it wants to be hip and cool.

The ultimate tragedy of all of this, or at least one of them, is that by taking that action the Supreme Court not only teed up a system that now acts as an agency of repression for people who hold the traditional view, but that it also seems to have been the straw that broke the American political camel's back.  For decades both political parties have managed to avoid taking actions on really hard decisions in areas that amount to philosophical matters.  Republicans claimed to be opponents of abortion but they haven't managed to do much about it at a national level since 1973, leaving the matter to be fought out at the state level in bills that are always around the margins.  Congress steadfastly adhered, in both parities, at a national level to the traditional view of marriage up until the Obergefell decision at which time the Democrats, true to their traditional form, leaped upon the caboose of the departed train and claimed the issue as their own while the GOP, true to its traditional form, claimed to be opposed to the decision but set itself into its traditional seat of unofficial lethargy.  Likewise, on immigration, which is now constantly in the Courts and which also involves deep philosophical world views, both parties have pretty much sat around doing nothing.

But there was something about Obergefell, ;perhaps because it  runs so contrary to what most people have held to be true about sex, let alone marriage, and in an area where most people are perfectly capable of grasping the philosophical nature of the debate by simple personal observation, that really fed into a deep disgust with the status quo that's been simmering at least since 1968.  Obergefell may very well have broken the American political dynamic and what the Court's do with the followup may make it increasingly worse.  It may very well be the case that an actual third party with enough support to gain actual seats in legislative bodies will come about and it will take millions from both parties if it does.  

All of which makes Justice Kennedy's befuddlement about how people reacted to Obergefell demonstrate just how out of touch the old man really is.  In private statements, he expressed wounded dismay that people disliked the decision and thought it would be like his decision on flag burning, which he believes everyone likes but which, in reality, is largely forgotten.  This won't be forgotten as his gutting of the legislative process and its impacts will be ripping us apart for years. 

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Postscript.

 You can't think that.

It's worth remembering that amongst the worse things this country has ever done have been periods in which the government's official position on one thing or anther was "dissenter, just shut up".

Whether you agree with the dissent or not (and I can think of periods of history in which I'd be on either side of the fence on various matters that the government was shutting people up about), shutting people up is universally anti democratic and bad.

The Alien and Sedition Acts, which sought to shut people up during John Adams presidency are looked back upon as a real black mark on the country's early history.  Almost from the onset of World War One the government was seeking to shut up all sorts of people, even Congressmen to a degree, who didn't think World War One was nifty and then it went right on to shut people up who were Communist or near Communist after the war.  I'm not keen on Communism but saying "you can't say that" was flat out wrong and is now regarded as both wrong and childish.

These acts, I'd note, occurred during a Progressive  Administration. So liberals, contrary to what they'll claim, certainly aren't above ordering people to just shut the heck up.

And the entire Red Scare of the 1950s is dimly remembered by most, if in accurately remembered. To the extent that Congress was seeking to ferret out Communist in the government who were acting as Soviet spies, I think they were right.  But it went beyond that and they went after Communist in average life, which wasn't a crime.  If a film maker was a Communist, well, that was his right. Saying, "you can't think that" was wrong.

I note this, as it would appear that we're in one of those eras once again, and that's extremely troubling.  The point at which one side in a debate says "you can't say that, you can't think that" and has the backing of the government. . . . well, that's McCarthyism as people imagine it to have been.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.