GAY ISSUES DESTINED FOR TOP COURT

[davidinalameda]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/11/MNGVCE66GN1.DTL

Abortion may dominate next month's Senate hearings on whether to confirm John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, but gay rights is the stealth issue.

Democrats aren't as eager to push for same-sex marriage as they are to protect abortion, but there is little question that the leading edge of civil rights law involves lesbians and gays rather than more settled questions of gender and racial equality.

Over the next decade or more -- and if confirmed, the 50-year-old Roberts could be on the court for 30 years -- activists on both sides expect the Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act denying homosexuals federal benefits conferred by marriage and the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays and lesbians in the military.

[terrya]

1. The Supreme Court has definitely agreed on DADT, haven't they?

That is, to hear the case, right?

[davidinalameda]

3. I'm not sure

I'm thinking yes

[kbm8795]

2. I"m more concerned about having Lawrence overturned

because if that happens and we don't start rioting in the streets, we might as well just beg to be their b*tches.

[TaleWgnDg]

4. If it's Roberts who sits on the SCOTUS, then I believe that . . .

If it's Roberts who sits on the SCOTUS, then I believe that . . . Lawrence v. Texas won't be overturned due to Roberts pro bono work "behind the scenes" in Romer v. Evans.

The sensitivity of the gay rights issue became clear last week with the revelation that Roberts provided free legal advice for gay plaintiffs on a groundbreaking 1996 Supreme Court case, Romer vs. Evans, which struck down a Colorado ballot initiative banning antidiscrimination laws for gays.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/11/MNGVCE66GN1.DTL

Pardon the expression but Romer is the mother of mother cases when it comes to "gay rights!" Whereas, Lawrence was inevitable (but shocking to some) it merely overturned a prior past injustice in Bowers v. Hardwick which had to be overturned sooner or later as some of the SCOTUS justices, constitutional legal scholars, and others in the legal community have lamented.

However, that doesn't say much -- either way -- about same-sex marriage as to Roberts. Same-sex marriage, where all the legal rights of homosexuals would be reduced into precise language for all to see. The premier of long "laundry lists" in law. Roberts appears to be an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic of the genre of Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, both of whom, I believe, would recite biblical verse as to anti-gay marriage from the SCOTUS bench! Roberts may as well.

Roberts is a conundrum. A conservative who may be a social conservative in his heart or not. However, the "fat lady doesn't sing" until or unless he sits on the SCOTUS bench, and then it may be too late! And that "too late" may be for the next 40 years of him sitting on the bench, as well as another 50 or so years with his laws on the "books of America."

.