It makes me wonder why the Left just now loves Justice Anthony Kennedy so much.
Yes he was the tie breaker in the Obergefell decision which legalized gay marriage.
He was the tie breaker in Heller v. DC and McDonald v. Chicago which guaranteed the Second Amendment as an individual right that applies to the states as well as the federal government.
He also was the tie breaker and majority opinion writer in Citizens United which said that money is free speech and corporations are entitled to speak freely with their money through campaign contributions.
Justice Kennedy was a principled man on the side of civil liberties, and that is commendable.
It just seems that he has given the Left more reasons to hate him than to love him.
I think Obergefell is the new Roe; it is the universal litmus test and rallying cry for all the left wing extremists. The other opinions you quoted are probably in the “he whose name is not spoken” category, at least by comparison. Especially Heller. Citizens United does get named occasionally but isn’t the red flag of progressivism that the first two are.
I happen to agree with Obergfell. I was part of the “civil union” crowd back in the GWB days. The 14th Amendment guarantees equal rights under the law. Gays should get the same tax breaks and legal protections that straight couples get. The issue seems to be more of a sticking point over the word “marriage” than does does “do two guys who have lived together and had sex with each other for years get to file their tax returns jointly.”
The problem with Obergefell and Roe is that the Left attach more to the decision than is there.
Obergefell says “the 14a says gay couples get the same legal rights as straights when it comes to handing out lisences.”
Roe says “when a woman goes to the doctor in her first trimester she has complete privacy and the government can’t make medical decisions for her.”
Nothing in Obergefell means private people have to recognize gay marriage and nothing in Roe makes Abortion a constitutional right.
Those are good points. They aren’t how the case is usually stated, however. Consider the wedding cake case recently, which gave Kennedy a fair amount of egg on his face because he explicitly predicted this would not happen. (BTW, Neil Smith stated the argument nicely by invoking the “separate but equal” analogy.) Or consider that Roe is frequently used as an argument to support abortion throughout the 9 months.
On Obergefell, a better way to approach this in my view is to say that marriage is none of the government’s business. It is a private agreement, possibly with a religious component, possibly not. Tying government-assigned privileges to that agreement is improper and not authorized by the Constitution.
On Roe, it has long bothered me that the Court didn’t deal with this the obvious way, which is to invoke the 9th Amendment. Instead, they used bogus terminology about “penumbra”, perhaps to avoid giving credence to the 9th.
They don’t love Kennedy.
They hate Trump.
They HATE Trump to the point that they will celebrate Kennedy, even though they have plenty of reasons to cheer Kennedy’s retirement. If Scalia was still alive and he announced his retirement, the left would plead with him to stay on for at least two more years, just so that Trump could not nominate another SCOTUS justice.
Bingo.
The typical Leftist has a memory that would make a goldfish look like an eidetic savant. The love Justice Kennedy today because they were told to, they couldn’t have told you his name last month… and won’t be able to next year.
Goldfish memory! Thanks — now I have to wipe the beer off my keyboard.
— good one, and, I think you are right!
Huh? What’s all this about goldfish…?