We’re going to need a bigger pool

The Palace Pool

Over at Perry Street Palace, Iris Vander Pluym (my future podcast co-host; and we totes need to do this one day), has finished construction on her Palace Pool. In her infinite wisdom, Iris realized that there simply weren’t enough cups to collect all the conservative tears that have been flowing for weeks. It seems like there has been a never-ending stream of tears from whiny conservatives who have the sadz running through their veins. To these people, all us lowly peons seeking equal rights should be happy with the scraps the majority (read: white, male, and heterosexual) occasionally decides to grant us. We’re apparently supposed to be silent and not ask for further rights and heaven forbid we demand such things as full equality.  After all, if we had full equality, these shitstains might have to acknowledge that we are ::gasp:: human beings with the same rights they have.

The landmark June 26 SCOTUS decision that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states cause many conservatives to lose their shit. Their bigoted tears have quenched the thirst of many progressives over the last few weeks and they don’t appear to be letting up anytime soon. Among the many whiny regressive assholes were:

Justice Samuel Alito

Devastated that other people will be able to enjoy the right to marry-a right he has had for his entire life-Justice Alito ponders how his world will ever be the same again. Because it totes makes sense to think that his life was affected at all by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians being able to marry. What a fucknuggett.

It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of
gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.

Justice Antonin Scalia

Quick, get him a tissue before he cries all over that bowtie. Those things aren’t cheap, y’know!

“I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy,” he begins.

“The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me,” he offers. “It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best.”

“But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law,” he opines. “Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its ‘reasoned judgment,’ thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect.”

Justice Clarence Thomas  (who offers THE most absurd, mind-boggling response)

Come on down South then. I’m willing to take time out of my busy schedule to treat you just as badly as those liberal northern elites. This duty I shall shoulder on my own (although I’m sure I can coax a few friends into sharing the burden with me).

Aside from undermining the political processes that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect. The history of religious liberty in our country is familiar: Many of the earliest immigrants to America came seeking freedom to practice their religion without restraint. …

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well. Today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.

The majority appears unmoved by that inevitability. It makes only a weak gesture toward religious liberty in a single paragraph…

Had the majority allowed the definition of marriage to be left to the political process — as the Constitution requires — the People could have considered the religious liberty implications of deviating from the traditional definition as part of their deliberative process. Instead, the majority’s decision short-circuits that process, with potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty. …

Perhaps recognizing that these cases do not actually involve liberty as it has been understood, the majority goes to great lengths to assert that its decision will advance the ‘dignity’ of same-sex couples.

The flaw in that reasoning, of course, is that the Constitution contains no “dignity” Clause, and even if it did, the government would be incapable of bestowing dignity. Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. …

The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

Then there are the responses from various GOP presidential hopefuls and leading conservatives. Following the marriage equality announcement, you didn’t have to be psychic to imagine how these people would respond to the ruling.

Ted Cruz

“I’m tired. So very tired of all these uppity marginalized people demanding rights. Who the hell do they think they are infringing upon my right to discriminate against them? It’s just not fair!”

In an interview with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep on Sunday in New York City, the GOP presidential hopeful doubled down on his belief that the court had overstepped its bounds in both the marriage decision and in upholding Obamacare. And as a result, Cruz said, the justices should be subject to elections and lose their lifetime appointments.

“This week in response to both of these decisions, I have called for another constitutional amendment — this one that would make members of the Supreme Court subject to periodic judicial retention elections,” said Cruz.

Cruz said that 20 states have a system in place where voters can choose to either keep or remove their judges if they “overstep their bounds [and] violate the constitution.”

“That is very much front and center something I intend to campaign on,” he said. “And marriage and religious liberty are going to be integral, I believe, to motivating the American people to come out and vote for what’s, ultimately, restoring our constitutional system.”

Cruz’s vigorous response and call to action separate him from many of his 2016 GOP rivals in the wake of the two landmark decisions last week. Some Republicans were quietly happy that the court did not strike down the state exchanges in question in King v. Burwell, fearing that many Americans would be kicked off their plans and putting the onus on Republicans to come up with a quick fix.

Cruz instead took to the Senate floor on Thursday to blast the court’s decision in no uncertain terms: “These robed Houdinis have transmogrified a federal exchange into an exchange ‘established by the state.’ This is lawless.”

Mike Huckabee

“My lord, I have failed you. I have tried to hard to live up to your image, but I have failed. Forgive me, please.” “No, my child. You have not failed me. In my image were you created. And in you I see much of me. You have drunk deep of my misogyny and homophobia. Truly, you are not a failure (because if you are, what does that say about me). The world looks at you and knows the kind of god I am: cruel, misogynistic, sadistic, hateful, and above all else (at least according to you) homophobic.”

“1975, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham said that ‘if God does not bring his judgment upon this land, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah,’” Huckabee said. “She said that 40 years ago. What would she say today if she was still alive? When the Supreme Court just two weeks ago, or as I call them, the Extreme Court, made the most radical decision when it comes to the definition of marriage, it truly was a remarkable day in which they did not vote for equality of something, they voted for the redefinition of something.”

After criticizing President Obama for his stance on same-sex marriage, Huckabee said that people must defy the court’s decision with the same courage as the nation’s founders, adding that “the courts of man can no more suspend the definition and law of marriage than it could suspend the law of gravity.”

Tony Perkins

“My name is Tony Perkins. Despite being the head of the Family Research Council, I don’t support families, and I fucking suck at doing research.”

“Government has a vested interested in seeing those children grow up with a mother and a father,” Perkins said. “Now they’ve changed that policy, obviously, with this and we’re going to suffer the social consequences as a result.

“When you look at, for instance, our prison system today, and there’s a lot of effort, some of which I’m involved in, prison reform to try to scale back the prison population which is getting out of control, but 70 percent of most of the men in the prison have had little or no interaction with a father in their life. That’s why you saw about a decade and a half ago fatherhood initiatives. There is a direct correlation between increased social costs and the breakup of the family and this will only exacerbate that situation and take us further down this path.”

Rick Santorum

“Lord,” said McFrothy “where am I going wrong? Why can I not convince people of the true definition of marriage?” “Because, beloved child of my genocidal heart, you have not yet understood the true definition of marriage.” “What then, is the true definition, oh holy tyrannical one?” said McFrothy. “A male soldier and a female prisoner of war my ignorant child. If you’d read your damn Bible you would know this. Now get thee forth and join the military!”

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does … [I]t destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that’s antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, where it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family … In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.

A common theme is apparent among their reactions: doom, gloom, end of the world, redefinition of marriage, god is judging, yadda yadda waaaaaaaaah. Well if they thought their god was judging the nation for marriage equality, he’s going to blow his imaginary top at yesterday’s ruling from the EEOC that existing civil rights laws bar employment discrimination based on sexual orientation:

“[A]llegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex,” the commission concluded in a decision dated July 15.

The independent commission addressed the question of whether the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars anti-LGB discrimination in a complaint brought by a Florida-based air traffic control specialist against Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx.

The ruling — issued without objection from any members of the five-person commission — applies to federal employees’ claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment.

[…]

While the EEOC had been pushing toward today’s decision with cases and even field guidance addressing coverage under Title VII of specific types of discrimination faced by gay people, the July 15 decision states that “sexual orientation is inherently a ‘sex-based consideration.’”

In reviewing courts’ prior interpretation of the words of Title VII, the commission acknowledged plainly that sexual orientation itself is not listed as a type of discrimination barred in the 1964 law.

“[T]he question is not whether sexual orientation is explicitly listed in Title VII as a prohibited basis for employment actions. It is not,” the commission found. Instead, the commission stated that the question is the same as in any other Title VII sex discrimination case: “whether the agency has ‘relied on sex-based considerations’ or ‘take[n] gender into account’ when taking the challenged employment action.”

The commission found that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination for several reasons. Among the reasons, the commission stated, is because sexual orientation discrimination “necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex” and “because it is associational discrimination on the basis of sex.”

After a review of the case law regarding similar challenges to employment practices alleging a violation of Title VII where the initial understanding of the law would not have included that coverage, the commission stated, “The courts have gone where the principles of Title VII have directed.”

“Our task is the same,” the decision found. “We therefore conclude that Complainant’s allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex. We further conclude that allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex.”

In addition to the numpties above, I’m fairly certain a lot of cake bakers, wedding photographers, florists, and bowling alley owners will be crying. That’s a lot more conservatears than Iris’ current pool will be able to handle. She’s going to need to remodel the dang thing already. I’m thinking an Olympic-sized swimming pool to catch all their tears. Maybe something like this:

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We’re going to need a bigger pool
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