The Supreme Court tries a bit to mop up a dog's breakfast. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Given that I criticized the Obergefell decision here in depth, some might find it surprising that I haven't gotten around to commenting quicker on this one.

I meant to and in fact I was prepared to really scoriate this opinion, based on early legal analysis of it.  But having read it, I'll concede that the Court did a much better job with it than I would have thought.

It's not as if they've solved the problem they created with Obergefell, but Anthony Kennedy's opinion and the concurring opinions go a lot further in that direction, and even in a legally cogent manner, than I would have guessed they would have.  Indeed, a characteristic of Kennedy's personality seems to come through in the decision in that he appears to be a bit miffed that people ignored his comments on how the earlier decision wouldn't result in a big social revolution, when in fact it is being used to do just that.  It's known that Kennedy gets upset with criticize of his decisions in the popular venue and it seems that he might also get upset by their misuse.

When Justice Kennedy cast his lot with those preforming a judicial coup in Obergefell it was my prediction that his happy prediction that it wouldn't really impact anything other than marriages between homosexuals was absolute and obvious nonsense. That came to be rapidly true, and it made it up to the Supreme Court pretty quickly in the form of cake. 

Indeed.

Well, perhaps another line regarding Kennedy's initial writing might be more appropriate.

Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun,
Must separate Constance from the nun -
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
A Palmer too!- no wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye;
I might have known there was but one
Whose look could quell Lord Marmion.

Marmion, Canto 6.

Kennedy's original Obergefell decision was always a judicial mess as it was not grounded in the law and didn't develop it in a sustainable fashion.  The dissents pegged what really occurred.  A group of aged Ivory Tower jurists, attempting to get ahead of a social trend, did what they though hip and cool, thereby giving themselves the credit for what they thought to be an inevitable social trend anyhow.  If they were correct in their prognostication, what they really did was to guarantee decades of hostility towards the Supreme Court, which richly deserves it for engaging in a judicial end run, and decades of fighting as Americans do not accept such actions lightly.  If they were wrong, they will have created, in the process, misery over misery as people slug it out, outside of their legislatures.

But Kennedy, based upon the original opinion, seemed completely naive to that reality.  Now that the first wave has washed up on the shore of the Court, he seems downright irritated that people didn't agree with his view that this didn't impact deeply held religious beliefs and more realistic about what his earlier sloppy opinion meant.  So this one is much clearer and, contrary to what the press has indicated about it, it actually decides quite a bit.  It may be a limited holding, and indeed it is under its own terms, but it's not as limited as it might seem.

The decision is, I'd note, also exactly legally correct in its procedure, so the pundits that are amazed by that, are basically ignorant of the law.

Okay, let's start there.

Procedurally, the appellant here was found to be in violation of a Colorado law by a commission that's delegated to tell the residents of the Mile High Weedy State what they can and cannot think.  Okay, that's not really what the commission does, but the formation of commissions of this type always tend towards that result.  The reason for that was that appellant, Masterpiece Cake Shop, declined to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding party based on their moral convictions.  Interestingly, and often missed in this public discussion of this matter, Colorado did not recognize homosexual marriages at the time and the service was to be preformed in Massachusetts, not Colorado.  Colorado did protect, however, the right civil rights of homosexuals against discrimination, which most people most places are generally in favor of.

To anyone who really ponders it, no matter what their views may be, the fact that a bakery can get in trouble for such things is really problematic.  This isn't really the same as refusing to sit African Americans at a diner counter and almost everyone knows that.  Obergefell overturned millennia of human practice and is arguably not very much appreciated by a huge section of the public who views the decision as contrary to faith, morals and nature.  Moreover, the propaganda of the proponents of the decision leading up to it was that they would never use such a thing to argue for absolute social acceptance at all levels, which they now are.  This would nearly require a complete subversion of religious beliefs by all traditional religions and beliefs, which no other earlier civil rights act did.  And it also opens the door to any number of really odd results.  Can a Christian couple demand that a Jewish delicatessen that caters for weddings provide a pork roast on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) for a Christian wedding?   Can a Jewish family demand that a Muslim bakery bake a cake for a Bar Mitzvah?  Can a homosexual couple demand that a Russian Orthodox Priest perform a wedding for them in spite of the blistering clear objection to that in that (and other) faiths?  These are all questions that were promised to be absurd prior to Obergefell but which are all on the table now.

And this came directly into play in Masterpiece Cake Shop as the Colorado commission dismissed and even insulted the owners religious objections, which extended not only to wedding cakes but Halloween cakes and the like.

So the Court held that the appellants religious objections were not seriously and sufficiently considered and remanded the decision.  Yes, it's limited, but that was the right decision and its a pretty serious dope slap to the commission.  Now, what we'll see what the commission does but experience shows they usually whine and cry and send back a bad decision again, so we'll likely see this come back up.

But the direction seems clear.  In the decision the Court stated:

Whatever the confluence of speech and free exercise principles might be in some cases, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s consideration of this case was inconsistent with the State’s obligation of religious neutrality.

So it sent it back for reconsideration, with directions that religious considerations be taken into account.

The Court is correct in all of that and it tried to make it plain, without giving too much direction in one way or another, that it wasn't trying to wad freedom of religion and conscience up in a ball and toss it out.  In the decision it noted:

Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.

Of course the Court is treading a fine line between truth and fiction here in that while society came to that recognition, it didn't in the form in which the Supreme Court placed public in Obergefell.  That statement by Kennedy, however, is a pretty clear indication of what he thought he was doing, which wasn't really what he did.  He went immediately on to haul in part of the decision in the next paragraph as a preventative to what was, and likely is, going to be another challenge sooner or later:

When it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to the free exercise of religion. This refusal would be well understood in our constitutional order as an exercise of religion, an exercise that gay persons could recognize and accept without serious diminishment to their own dignity and worth. Yet if that exception were not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.

Yep, that's the problem already.

So we know that clergy cannot be compelled to perform homosexual marriages and we know that objections on conscience are valid.  We don't know what the limits to those objections are, and it would have been impossible for the Court to delineate them.  This means we're now going to have piles and piles of appellate decisions attempting to define that, and decades of fighting over it, unless Obergefell is overturned in a near term.  I know that's regarded as impossible, but we're not living in conventional political times.  For example, on the day I'm writing this a massive tariff is being imposed on China due to a campaign promise and that would have been regarded as a political impossibility in any other administration.

Anyhow, assuming that its not reversed soon, it's going to be argued and defined a lot.  Kennedy didn't seem to realize that in his earlier decision, but now does, and he's now reminding us that the promise of the Constitution is that religious views will be respected.   That was the promise too of the backers of homosexual unions, but they seem to have forgotten that. 

Kennedy, it might be noted, is rumored to be considering retirement.  Rumors to that affect are constant nearly every term, as he's quite elderly.  But this time I'd credit them a little more than usual.  Kennedy has been the "swing vote" due to his oatmeal mush like view of the law, which is no doubt not how he views it.  He's sensitive to his opinions being criticized and here he has a real problem.  It seems that he never intended Obergefell to be read the way it now is being read at the street level and he must surely be aware that out in the commissions and trial courts of the land its in for revolutionary application.  We've hardly even begun to see the commencement of the abuse of a decision that could only be used in that fashion.  Kennedy, due to his age, is at the point in life in which he's on death's door.  Whoever replaces him will swing the Court to the right or the left.  The right of the Court, in spite of criticism to the contrary is much  more likely to try to keep Kennedy's decision in place in the form in which he envisioned it.  The left won't, and instead will take it and run with it until there's a public reaction or societal reformation.  If Kennedy left now, ironically, his replacement is more likely to uphold his envision than if that replacement is put on the Court by a Democratic President.

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_scott_118003

Harassed, bullied and body shamed for $7.50 an hour

And so they are suing.

Some NFL cheerleaders.

Oh, give me a freaking break.

Okay, a couple of things here to strike me as perhaps worth of attention on their behalf.  If they were paid an illegally low wage for their "work", that's wrong.

And to the extent one alleges that she was attacked by a fan and her employer did nothing about it, that's wrong too.

But as for the rest of this, I mean come on.

There's an entire somewhat popular television show following the young women who try to get onto the Dallas Cowboy's cheerleader squad.  Body shaming? Yep, they do it.  Shoot, it's right there on television.

But this is not a dignified career.

One of these individuals or their lawyer said something about "we are professional women".  I guess, but in the case of cheerleaders for NFL teams that professionalism unfortunately relates back in a way to the oldest profession.  And even to the extent it doesn't, it's not a very dignified occupation.

It isn't, I'd note, high school or college cheerleading in which the cheerleaders have at least more than a hint of clothing.  It's a Playboyized version of it from the 1970s.

It ought to go.

Today in Wyoming's History: June 18, 1918. Big storms and the state of rail transportation.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 18: 1918  Huge evening thunderstorms washed out railroad bridges in Central Wyoming.  Hardest hit was the area between Powder River and Waltman.

A rail line still runs between the towns today, but there are no bridges.  At the time, there were numerous ones, which shows how different rail bed construction was at the time.

Interestingly, at the time of 2018, this same day was also pretty rainy in Central Wyoming.

The Arctic Summer

We have had, perhaps, two warm days this Spring and Summer (yes, I know its technically not summer yet). Given that, the next person I hear saying "sure has been hot" is going to send me into a rant.

It hasn't been anything close to hot.

It's been absolutely freezing so far this summer.

It's been dreary, wet and cold.

In spite of that, given that its technically in the refrigeration season, my office has turned on the air conditioning. This happens every year and I don't get it.  A person doesn't need air conditioning when its only 50 degrees outside, and simply nothing that it is June doesn't provide a reason to do that.

The same is true at home.  During the day, air conditioning is going to be on because, well, it's June.  Polar Bears could be dragging down seals in my front yard, but the female residents of the house would have the air conditioning on.

Or all the windows opening and the ceiling fans going.

Which has been the case every night recently.

Our house has been undergoing house destruction (um remodeling) and we're now into a full month of it.  I can't and don't understand why this is taking this long even though I was warned by my wife that it would.  I do understand that there were delays as there are always delays in construction projects due to materials and the like.  Indeed, the Pyramids are actually an ongoing construction project, I'm pretty sure, which are just in a period of delay while Cairo Amalgamated Pyramid adjusts some problematic back orders.  I'm not complaining about that really as the delays haven't been anywhere as bad as I've expected them to be, but I'm sick to death of the entire project and I have been since the first day of it.  Granted, I ignored it as I hate stuff like this anyhow and would have only replaced the worn out carpet with new, non carpeting, flooring, but whatever.  In retrospect I wish that I would have been involved as I think I would have required a contractual provision limiting this to two weeks, which is all the more that I can tolerate of this and all the more I really think such things ought to take, but again, I didn't and I've been trying to ignore it.

But for some reason an aspect of this is that every day and night now all the windows on and the stupid ceiling fans are constantly running, even if it's almost freezing outside.

Well, it's June.

So that means its warm. Right?

It rained all last night.  Up here, where we're over a mile high, it isn't warm, and its just not going to get to be warm.

No matter, open those windows and let's turn the fans on to hurricane.

Issues In The Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue(s) No. 2: The Social Issues.

Okay, it's in a different context, but it's almost like the candidates took this message to heart in their campaigns.  Sort of.

As an aside, the World War Two female dress uniform was oddly about the last good looking one that the Army issued.  Odd.

Right now, I'd give Mary Throne the winning odds to become Wyoming's next governor but for;

1. Social issues; and
2. Retained Democratic baggage from the Clinton and Obama years.

I'd have not said that a few weeks ago, but given the poor Republican performance so far on the public lands, which alienates sportsmen, and on economics, which would tend to alienate anyone listening, and Thrones demonstrated ability to stand apart and make sense on these matters, I think she would pull ahead and win.

And she still might.

But in order to do that, she has to overcome both of the factors set out above.

The second item is a matter of distinguishing herself from the Clintons and President Obama.  None of the recent Democratic challengers have been able to do that.  Just being a Democrat tends to taint them in that regard, and beyond that they generally will not dis-embrace the recent Democratic Presidents.  The last Democrat to really do that was Freudenthal who made sort of a grumpy comment while he was in about not endorsing anyone, but then came around and did.  It wouldn't hurt, and indeed it would help, a Wyoming Democrat to say something like; "you know, at the end of the day you vote for the person. That's why I didn't vote for Obama and that's why it's okay for a Republican to criticize Trump.  After all, President Theodore Roosevelt said . . . ."

Well, anyhow.

The first one depends on what her positions are, and frankly I don't know what they are.  Probably not to many of us do know what they are. Which means she has the chance to mold her views to fit the views of Wyoming's electorate.  That still doesn't mean, however, that she will be able to satisfy everyone. She won't.

But right now, at any rate, nobody actually knows what her views actually are.  And for that matter, determining what everyone else's views are is tough, as nobody is talking about them much.  Freiss might be an exception, and Galetos a bit, as they've both put out campaign material clearly stating that they are pro life and Freiss has a long record of being just that.

Okay, so what are the Social Issues?

Well, there are a lot of them, but the ones in current discussion around the US are the following:

1. Abortion
2. Euthenasia
3. Same Sex Marriage
4. Immigration.
5. Gun Control.

Let's start with number 5 as we can dispose of it pretty early.

Remington poster advertising the Remington 08, a semi automatic rifle introduced in 1908.

Unless a candidate is insane, in Wyoming they're going to come out for the Second Amendment and against gun control. End of debate here.  Indeed, this is so well established that some of the candidates have added this to their campaign material, which is a lot like walking into a bar, ordering a beer, and then standing up to proclaim your opposition to Prohibition.  I mean, why bother.  Probably simply mentioning that you are for the Second Amendment in a clear and convincing manner is good enough.  If you can find a photograph of yourself with an antelope you took recently, or better yet if you can find a photograph of yourself with an AR15, put it up.  You've done all you need to.

Or maybe not.

I've found this year that some individuals that I know that  are really strong supporters of the Second Amendment are open about not being "single issue voters" this time around.  Indeed, I know at least two dedicated shooters who are open about there being no earthly way that they will vote for Harriet Hageman due to her position on public lands.  One of them is open about going for Mary Throne and leaning towards Cheney's Republican opponent.  One got into a pretty heated debate with a local candidate who is openly backing Hageman to the extent that he's pretty declared that he won't support people who are supporting Hageman.

That debates like this are occurring, and that people are saying "I support the Second Amendment but I'm going for the Democrat because of the Republican positions on public lands" should be a really clear warning for the GOP.  

Really clear.

Indeed, this opens a door for Throne like no other.  If I were her, I'd go right to a range with a hunting rifle, put in for a grizzly bear license, and take a short hog hunting vacation to Texas.

Just saying.

Before I move on, I'll note that there is surprisingly a tiny current, maybe (maybe it's larger, actually) that flows the other way here as well, although in a qualified way.

Just after I wrote the above, a lawsuit was filed in Uinta County, over the School District's decision there to allow teachers in some circumstances to carry firearms.

Frankly, I'm for this move although I'll grant its a controversial one.  A couple of districts have now voted to allow this and some are pondering it.  They all propose to allow teachers with training to carry.

But some thoughtful people are opposed to this for a variety of reasons and in Uinta County a lawsuit has been filed by some in that category who claim that the School District violated the Administrative Procedures Act in its recent decision there.

As nobody really is all that excited about issues pertaining to the APA, that move is a tactical one by a party that feels the issue wasn't given a full airing.  

I'm not going to go into the issue of the APA here and I'm not even going to really ponder it, but I will say that even though Wyoming is solidly Second Amendment, the margins of that aren't as solid as sometimes thought.  Various attempts to expand carry here, which are already extremely broad, generally haven't worked.

Which isn't to say that the state isn't solidly Second Amendment.  It is.

Okay, let's move on to the other issues.

Even in the Soviet Union, which was founded on a philosophy which had declared that all wives were to be held in common and which was an early backer of abortion, the official ideology came to celebrate the role of women as mothers.

Let's start with abortion, an issue that could make and break support for Throne, and any other candidate, with some voters.

Unlike gun control, there definitely remains candidates for which this is a make or break issue.  I'm frankly one of them.  For voters who regard the termination of human life by voluntary act as an immoral or unethical thing to do, no matter what a candidates other positions are, this is one they can't simply set aside.  How can they?  If you believe that a human being is a human being from the point of conception, or if you even just take the position that human beings shouldn't be killed by other human beings under normal circumstances and you aren't sure when life begins, you can't vote for somebody who is okay with abortion.  It's impossible.

On this issue, so far we only know that Freiss is definitely pro life. There are, therefore, probably a lot of GOP voters right now hoping that somebody else really comes out pro life as well.  Galeotos has noted that he is pro life, and given his background, we might guess (but right now can't be certain) that he's Greek Orthodox, in which case he'd be a member of a Christian faith that is pro life.  Freiss is, as he's some sort of Evangelical Protestant, although not all of them are pro life.  He is.

Throne is a mystery on this issue right now and she's really campaigning on the economy.  Her website notes that shes' an active Presbyterian, but given the current wide splits in the Presbyterian faith, we can't really tell what that means.  Traditionally, Presbyterians were very conservative Protestants, but in recent years the Presbyterians have split wide apart and have widely varying opinions on all sorts of things. So that doesn't tell us much.

The fact that she's completely silent on this issue might or might tell us much.  She's getting pretty open about her opinions, which is a good thing.

For that matter, we really don't know much about the other candidates in this are either. Rod Miller, running against Cheney, has material on his website that would suggest he's a member of the Republican camp that is liberal on social issues and is likely more to the left on this than Throne or anyone else.  For voters who would vote for him over Cheney on public land issues, and they definitely exist, this will be the stopping point for some.  Cheney may already be in the "hold your nose and vote" category for some.

At any rate, Throne has an opportunity here if she's savvy.  Not matter what she thinks in the privacy of her home, if she's smart, she'll come out at least as pro life as Galeotos.  She'd be wise to come out as pro life. Democrats, all five of them, are going to vote for her no matter what.  Her task is to attract republicans.

Euthanasia, the current trend to off the old, basically, is a similar issue.  No Wyoming voter who has any brains will say they are for this under any circumstance, and we can presume no serious candidate will.  

Okay, lets move on to stuff that nobody is going to talk about in this election at all, and let's start with Same Sex Marriage and other stuff in this area.

The White House in the colors of the LBGT movement.  President Obama had entered office supporting the traditional role of marriage and then came around to this view right about the time that Obergefell was decided.  Perhaps he really changed his view or perhaps he was being cowardly here or there.  More than any single thing he did in his presidency, his taking this act guarantees animosity towards Democrats in various parts of the country that will last for generations, as it anticipates a national acceptance of a court decision that is unlikely to ever be fully accepted.

What, you may be thinking, didn't the Supreme Court decide all that, so it's over.

Well, the U.S. Supreme Court did decide that same gender marriage was a Constitutional right.  It's also decided in the past that only states had the right to define who could and could not marry, so it clearly is capable of changing its mind.

For that matter, it's decided in the past that separate but equal was okay, until it decided that it wasn't.  It decided that very much regulation of business was outside the powers of the US until it decided, during Franklin Roosevelt's administration, that wasn't true.  It decided in Roe v. Wade that abortion was a constitutional right up to a certain point, and its' widely believed, and with good reason, that it'd be pretty unlikely to draw that same line today.

The point of all of that is that eh Court can change its mind. And its particularly prone to changing its mind when its decisions are legally weak and barely supported. And when it gets out in front of what it perceives to be evolving social change, it tends to spark a counter reaction among Americans who can't stand to have a Court determine for them what it fairly clearly something that should be in the legislatures, not in the Courts.

And  there's a long history in the United States of the American population refusing to accept a Supreme Court result in those instances in which there's a large percentage of people who do not agree with it.

Indeed, in spite of the the Court's reputation to the contrary, in reality the court's "pioneering" decisions tend to follow, not lead, public opinion.  By the time the Court successfully takes on a controversial social issue, so to speak, it's probably reached the point of critical mass and the Court is simply pushing it easily off the top of the hill, or just accelerating its descent.  It's quite unlikely to actually be pushing an issue up, and over, a hill so to speak.

There are a lot of examples of this.  But take, for example, cases such as Brown v. the Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia.  They are important, but they were decided in 1954 and 1967 respectively.  By 1954 the military was integrated and integration was the rule in most of the United States.  By 1967 the thought of inter racial marriages being illegal was shocking to most Americans.  and there's a whole host of similar decisions.

And then there's decisions like Dred Scott or Roe v. Wade which simply aren't accepted by a large number of individuals and which involved issues that were in hot debate at the time.  Decisions of that type nearly always involve the winning party saying "see, we told you so" and then taking the decision and running with it beyond what was originally sued for or argued for as policy. And the opposing side, cheated of its place at the ballot box, fights back after an initial period of shock.  Obergefell v. Hodges is in that category.  The victors have already changed their argument from being one that they just wanted what others had (misunderstanding the underpinning nature of marriage) and have gone on to demand and expect full acceptance. The other side which argues that this does not comport with nature and the nature of marriage will fight back.

Normally the fight in this situation takes years and years, decades even. Abortion provides a good example as the argument has been going on since 1973 but over that time the forces that are opposed to it have captured the views of the majority of Americans.  If allowed to go to the ballot today, most states would certainly restrict abortion.  It's highly likely that the majority of of the justices on the Supreme Court, although only barely, would side with any changes in Roe now.  But this has involved a forty year debate.

Chances are high that Obergefell will also involve a long debate, but not necessarily inevitable.  Obergefell, far more than any United States Supreme Court decision since Roe, was a blatant judicial coup.  It has sparked a deep reaction that has gone far deeper than Roe ever did, which is surprising as Roe involved issues of life and death, and really motivated a large section of the country's citizenry into animosity against the Court and indeed against American culture at the current time and that's sparking a counter reaction.  Even in the Court that's occurred as the pathetic Anthony Kennedy pouted in Masterpiece Cake Shop  that, basically, the people whose argument he accepted had lied to him and he didn't mean for things to go that far.  Limiting opinions by the Court aren't that uncommon, but one like Kennedy just authored is pretty unusual and would suggest that the decision may be hanging by a frayed thread.

It's hard to bring an issue back up that's just been decided, but it does happen.  It's happened in the recent example of firearms cases. And one of the reasons that it usually doesn't occur is that people step back and respect the decision even if they don't like it.  Here, they might not, and as the current President came into office actually stating that Obergefell needed to be reversed, and as he's already had a demonstrated track record of actually acting on controversial promises, it's not impossible that something would be done to spark the decision.  If it went back with a replacement for Kennedy, I don't think it would hold.

Which doesn't mean that it will be an issue in this election, but it's smoldering there. At least one candidate running for a county office flat out wanted his county to challenge an anticipatory decision by a local Federal District Court Judge.  As a somewhat similar example, there are lots of municipalities around the country that have been flat out repeatedly violating District of Columbia v. Heller as they disagree with it, even if a majority of Americans do.  This issue if far from over, it's just begun.

It won't be an issue in the Wyoming election, but any candidate running should be prepared to respond to question in a cogent fashion.  And if that response is a happy declaration to the effect of "gosh, aren't we glad that President Obama declared June to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Month" is the wrong answer, whatever else that answer might.

And that brings up another topic.  While same gender marriage is unlikely to be a major issue in the election, it's likely that on a local level various issues associated with this very small minority may be.

Indeed, following Obergefell a hopelessly naive Wyoming legislator who is a lesbian had the idea of sponsoring a bill in the Wyoming legislature to wipe out gender specific language in Wyoming statutes, including those on marriage. So this is indeed very close to this topic.  She went densely to a meeting in norther Wyoming on the topic of the bill and was met with universal hostility from the unhappy audience, returning to her home shocked.  She shouldn't have been. There's no real support for Obergefell here and those who assume that a Supreme Court decision equals global acceptance are deluded in the extreme. And that is why people who want to avoid wrecking debates on other topics should wholly avoid interjecting it in. But it does keep coming up, as in city counsel resolutions that have no impact, but which express an opinion.

Well let's go not nervously to immigration then.

Inspecting a box car for illegal immigrants, 1940.

While same sex issues are likely not to come into the election directly, except maybe as blazing meteors that come in and destroy a campaign by way of a comment here and there, immigration will come up.

As Wyoming is an oilfield state, and as oilfields are places of blue collar labor, Wyoming, during boom periods, has a lot of immigrant labor and frankly a lot of illegal immigrant labor.  I have had cases in which it was rather obvious that some of the witnesses were illegal immigrants and one in which that was a central issue in terms of its impact on Wyoming Workers Compensation.  Anyone who lives here and thinks they don't run into illegal immigrants on a weekly basis is kidding themselves.  For that matter, because the last boom was long running, we have the classic confused situations that supposedly exist only elsewhere.  I have had, for example, a witness testify in a case once who had been brought into the country so young and under such confused circumstances he literally had no idea on whether or not he was a citizen of the United States.

So this issue will be in the campaign.

This is a type of issue where an answer can almost never really help a candidate but it can totally wipe out a campaign. Here too, people need to be really careful and thoughtful on their answers.  I"ll assume, perhaps unfairly, that some candidates on the hard right are going to have an absolute shut the door view, but at the same time I have to note that the Republicans have been complicit in creating the situation we currently have.  Additionally, Hageman is from a farm/ranch family and the agriculture sector in Wyoming has employed a lot of immigrant labor and is still complaining about current restrictions on it.  This may be trickier as an issue that it seems, although I suspect everyone will come out with "we need fair reforms" and leave it at that.   Some of the right will go further.  This is an issue, I'd note, that Throne needs to be extremely careful with as, once again, it can loose her votes but not really gain her any.

Churches of the West: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Rock Springs Wyoming

Churches of the West: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Rock Springs Wyoming

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church is located one block from St. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church in Rock Springs in what was probably an ethnic neighborhood at the time the churches were built.  In addition to having a sizable Slavic Community, Rock Springs had a sizable Greek community as well, both drawn to the area in the early 20th Century by coal mining.

Best Post of the Week of June 10, 1918. The Economics Issue.

The Battle of Belleau Wood. June 10 to the conclusion.

Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1. The Economy

Painted Bricks: The Equitable Building, Denver Colorado.

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (a). The Economy again. . . the extractive industries

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1(b). The Economy again. . . dare we say it. . . Government (shush). And, what's up with Wyoming's GOP hating the Federal Government?

The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Three

The Y.M.C.A. Bryant Park Eagle Hut, New York City. Saturday, June 15, 1918.

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (c). The Economy again. . . Agriculture

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (d). The Economy again. . . Tourism. The fragile leg of the stool

Wyoming Gubernatorial candidate sitting on camp stool washing her feet of the tourism industry. . . okay, that's actually a cap chair.  The stool must already be broken.

Recently, in being asked about economic matters by the Casper Star Tribune, Harriet Hageman, in noting that there was a television advertisement boosting Wyoming tourism running in the background, made a dismissive comment to the effect of why couldn't Wyoming do something like that for coal.*

Wyoming state tourism advertisment.  Note what is not in this poster. . . nothing associated with the extractive industries.

Nothing could better demonstrate the fragile nature of this sector of Wyoming's economy.

Tourism is, in  my view, a byproduct of the agricultural sector of Wyoming's economy.  The large open spaces that agriculture preserves are also the preserves of wildlife and wild lands. By the same token, those industries which provide the bulk of income to Wyomingites and the state itself make use of those lands, but at their root, they are in some deep fundamental ways counter forces to tourism.  The balance between it all is preserved by the Federal Government and its multiple use policy on the Federal domain.  Candidates like  Hageman would bring in policies, if left unrestrained, that would tip that balance one way, and that balance is very easy to disrupt.  Indeed, if the really right wing politicians in the state had their way they'd flat out destroy much of the character of the state and this would put a dent in this section of the economy that made it look like it was hit by a truck.

Put another way, a lot of people come into the state to look at wildlife, to hunt, fish, ski, camp and hike.  

Nobody visits the state to see coal mines in Campbell County or drilling rigs in Converse County.

This puts this sector of Wyoming's economy uniquely on the outs with the remainder of it. And frankly a lot of Wyomingites are pretty ambivalent about tourism.  Indeed, if people are directly involved in it, a lot of Wyomingites hold a somewhat hostile view toward it in a way.  We'd rather not run into tourist crowding any spot we might wish to visit, and if we regard visiting fishermen and hunters as tourists, which we do, we're often not rather have them here at all.  Still we're aware that they contribute to the economy in a significant way.

We're not really inclined to do anything to help it, however.

And on top of that, we oddly miss opportunities to lightly tax it and help offset the loss of coal money.  Lodging taxes come up for vote in various Wyoming counties, and then lose.  It's odd, as we don't pay lodging taxes in our own counties as we don't stay in hotels there as a rule.  Likewise, the added $.01 tax is paid in large measure by visitors, and a lot of us oppose it as well (although we do pay it.)

And yet nobody is going to really speak about this sector of the economy in the election.  Nobody.

Tourism is a sector of the economy that depends, really, on the agriculture sector being successful as it preserves the basic nature of the state, and its silently in opposition to the extractive industries which contribute a massive amount of cash to the state's coffers but which almost anyone from anywhere else doesn't regard as visually pleasing.

Indeed, there are quite a few views held by Wyomingites that actually irritate visitors, and we don't care.  If you subscribe to the Tribune you'll often see letters to the editor which will state something like "I see where your legislature is consider. . . . . if this passes I shall never bring my family from Big Blight, New Jersey to visit your state".  Yeah. Well stay home.

But it is a huge factor of the economy.

And we know that big events can bring in big money to municipalities, if managed right.  The 2017 eclipse in Wyoming was proof of that, bringing in huge crowds.

A crowd that came from all over Wyoming gathered in downtown Casper during the cities week long eclipse festival.

Tourism, it might be noted, suffers in a weird way from being totally divorced from the economics that influence other sectors of Wyoming's economy.  Indeed, the economics of tourism is in some ways directly counter to the economics of other sectors of our economy.  Tourism does best if travel costs are low, and that means low gas costs.  Low gas costs mean low petroleum prices.  And if the cost of living is high, to include the cost of food at the table, tourism suffers.  Tourism does best when costs are low. As Wyoming's other commodities do better if their products are high, that creates an odd tension, although in fairness agriculture does better if petroleum is low as well.  Not that this creates an open sense of hostility, but you will occasionally hear grumbling about it.

All that would argue that the state does best with a balanced economy.

Should tourism and its role in the economy be an issue in the election?  Well, it won't be.

But we probably ought to remember that it is an important part of our economy.  While we're busy talking about other economic sectors, we shouldn't forget this one.  It's easy to disrup

*I suppose I know what she meant, that being why didn't Wyoming have an active program marketing coal, but the suggestion is extremely naive.  If that were done, it would in fact provoke a counter reaction by environmentalist which would be much more sympathetic to most people in the United States.  If anything, a "use coal" campaign by Wyoming would accelerate the decline of coal, not boost its fortunes.  At any rate, this is one of a series of statements by Hageman which would suggest her view of the Wyoming economy is basically fixed at about the 1940 level.

Poster Saturday: Girl of the Golden West