Passing by the windows of The Times last evening

Alito, as is his wont, advances an impertinent relationship of the Court to society, in suggesting it is the business of the Court to evaluate "the effects" of freedom to marry, when experience with freedom to marry is already countable in Kennedy's thousands of years. Both Justices shock the conscience with their presumption that freedom to marry might mean different things based on distinctions of sexuality which are not permissible to draw and which cannot be said to exist, without discrimination. How circular shall their timidity get? Pretending not to know "the effects" of freedom is a very, very strange posture for a Justice of the United States Supreme Court to adopt, in the exercise of judicial responsibility. But now we hear, that the plain intolerability of discrimination is such a novel suggestion, coming at our esteemed Justices so fast as to argue for patience in their absorption of the idea. It may be, that their institution's record of entertaining complaints with this discrimination is slight, and until Lawrence v. Texas, shameful; but to argue that respondent's complaint in Perry is trendy is not merely insulting, it is to define the history of discrimination exactly as Scalia argues they should: as non-existent because this Court never heard of it. Who will rid us of such priests?

Adam Liptak

The New York Times

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March 26, 2013©

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March 26, 2013©