"Unless we see a massive about-face (in public attitudes), 25 years from now people will look back at this and wonder why (equal marriage rights) took so long.Chapman University lawprof John Eastman says:
"I hope [Justice Kennedy] won't be swayed by shifting public opinion, assuming there is a shift".... If the law is supposed to change along with public attitudes, he said, "the political process is adequate to the task. We don't need the courts."Speaking of law that is/isn't changing with shifting public attitudes, I can't help changing the subject to the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause and the current flap over contraception and insurance coverage. An awful lot of conservatives — with Rush Limbaugh leading the pack — are endeavoring to shape public opinion about the meaning of these rights. Either they are genuinely ignorant about the case law interpreting the Free Exercise Clause or they are doing the very thing they normally rail against: trying to make the Constitution "evolve" so it says what they'd like it to say. Here's Rush:
The right to religious liberty in this context is unequivocal in our country and in the Constitution. It's right there in the Bill of Rights. Since when does a president have the power to threaten to issue a rule gutting religious liberty?It's absurd to declare there's no right to gay marriage in the Constitution and turn around and say the President's rule about contraception and insurance coverage violates some obvious "unequivocal" right in the Constitution. Have one theory of the Constitution and stick to it, clowns.
The First Amendment -- the Bill of Rights of the Constitution -- explicitly says that government shall have nothing to do with religion. You hear, do you not, the left constantly caterwauling, whining and moaning about "separation of church and state"?Now, he's reached the Establishment Clause, and suddenly he's an arch-separation-of-church-and-state guy. Nice to trash "the left" for inconsistency, but what's more hypocritical than being inconsistent in order to trash the other guy for inconsistency?
I've been a law professor for a long time, so it's not as though this sort of thing shocks me. But I would like to help you see how much dishonesty/ignorance is on display here. What would Rush and the other conservatives who are riding this religious freedom issue say about religiously motivated pacifists who don't want to pay taxes that fund the military?
More Rush:
Whenever a religious Republican or conservative seeks political office [the left worries] about "the imposition of religious moral values on people," and say, "This is intolerable! This is intolerable. It's not permitted! It's a violation of the Constitution." So the left hates the Constitution when it's an impediment to what they want to do. When it supports what they want to do, they're the biggest constitutionalists in the world.And the right? They do the same damned thing.
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