May 5

 What a chaotic week we have had so far. We went to our local dairy yesterday and the cashier asked how we were doing. We know her fairly so I simply quipped that the answer depended on what aspect of things she referred to. She mentioned the Supreme Court leaked draft decision and I summed up my feelings: we're fucked. I skimmed the decision and noticed several things about it. Alito tried to diminish the impact by insisting it wouldn't affect other "unspecified rights" such as the right to obtain contraception, the right to marry someone of a different race or the same sex, to begin with. If I am being polite I would say he was disingenuous. If I am honest I would say he is lying. If I give voice to my feelings I have to say the bastard is spewing shit from the wrong orifice. All of the decisions concerning "unspecified rights" (unspecified in that they aren't specifically enumerated in the Constitution) rest on the same arguments concerning the same Amendment. In my state, the senator who isn't up for reelection has already said he wanted to see gay marriage and interracial marriage go the same way. And this morning some red state politicians are taking aim at contraception. I think of the scene in the movie Elizabeth where the future Lord Burleigh tells Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting they are to show him her sheets each morning so he could know all her "proper functions" and, when they demure, tells them that the Queen's "person and body are no longer her own. They belong to the state."

Also, I think Alito was throwing a sop to Chief Justice Roberts by saying that these issues should be decided by elected representatives in the states. That, however, would mean two things: first that there would be no assurance that a couple married legally in another state (heterosexual or homosexual) could move to another state which doesn't recognize the validity of their (mixed race or same sex) marriage in that state. Second, any attempt by the federal legislatures to set a federal standard could be struck down because the Court has held that the states have jurisdiction in spite of the doctrine of supremacy of federal law over state laws. Any one remember the conclusion of Orwell's Animal Farm? "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others."