The Supreme Court, today

Posted on by albrooke

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

5-4 with Kennedy writing for the majority that states are required by the Fourteenth Amendment to license same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages performed by other states. Religious institutions have a right to speak against same-sex marriage.

Four separate dissents by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.

One more day or five . . .

Posted on by albrooke

“No matter how it rules, the Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges will go down as one of the biggest cases in recent memory.  There are actually two questions before the Court in the four cases, which hail from Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan:  whether the Constitution allows states to prohibit same-sex marriage; and whether states can refuse to recognize, or give effect to, the marriages of same-sex couples who were married in another state where same-sex marriage is legal.

Two years ago, Justice Kennedy joined the Court’s four more liberal Justices to strike down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage, for purposes of over a thousand federal laws and programs, as a union between a man and a woman only.  So all eyes were on him at the oral arguments in April.  He was hard to read, with tough questions for both sides, but supporters of same-sex marriage can take some comfort from the fact that he had virtually no questions during the section of the argument devoted to the question whether states have to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere – after all, that question only matters if the Court rules that there is no right to same-sex marriage.   Will Kennedy join the more liberal Justices again and solidify his position as an ‘unlikely gay rights icon‘ by ruling in favor of same-sex marriage?  We will know soon enough.”

http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/06/and-then-there-were-seven-the-remaining-cases-in-plain-english/

The Court is expected to rule tomorrow or Monday.

The Supreme Court’s schedule

Posted on by albrooke

Just in case anyone is checking here rather than on the normal news sources, the Supreme Court did not issue the Obergefell v. Hodges opinions today, however, they announced that they will issue some more case opinions on Thursday at 10:00a.  They will also likely issue case opinions next Monday.

Apparently everything has been issued except the Texas Fair Housing Act case, the Arizona redistricting commission case, King v. Burwell, Michigan v. EPA, Johnson v. US, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Glossip v. Gross.

You may want to go to SCOTUSblog (http://www.scotusblog.com/) for additional detail and analysis.

Readings for Rights, Wrongs & Rings

Posted on by albrooke

The following links are to the “assigned” reading materials.  They represent a range of views, and may help you think through the issues:

Tony Tucci, Homosexuality: The Biblical-Christian View, Bible.org https://bible.org/article/homosexuality-biblical-christian-view

Brief of Douglas Laycock, Thomas C. Berg, David Blankenhorn, Marie A Failinger and Edward McGlynn Gaffney, as Amici Curiae in Support of the Petitioners, Obergefell v. Hodges, Case Nos. 14-556, 14-562, 14-571, and 14-574 (March 6, 2015) http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CDAQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourt.gov%2FObergefellHodges%2FAmicusBriefs%2F14-556_Douglas_Laycock.pdf&ei=_TGIVfmOOMqPyAT1mJTgBg&usg=AFQjCNGia3K9_Nu8mTE6cM57Zh2UJf_ZwA&sig2=OffJXi_KvKcV-rR1Auu9nQ&bvm=bv.96339352,d.aWw  [This is a download.]

A View from the Courtroom, Same-Sex Marriage Edition, SCOTUSblog (April 28, 2015) http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/a-view-from-the-courtroom-same-sex-marriage-edition/

Amy Howe, No clear answers on same-sex marriage: In Plain English, SCOTUSblog (April 28, 2015) http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/no-clear-answers-on-same-sex-marriage-in-plain-english/

Robert P. George, Marriage and Equal Protection, The Witherspoon Institute: Public Discourse (May 1, 2015) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/05/14941/

Abigail Rine, What is Marriage to Evangelical Millenials? First Things (May 14, 2015). http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/05/what-is-marriage-to-evangelical-millennials

Tony Campolo, For the Record, tonycampolo.org (June 8, 2015). http://tonycampolo.org/for-the-record-tony-campolo-releases-a-new-statement#.VXiqWEYjeVp

Matthew Parris, As a gay atheist, I want to see the church oppose same-sex marriage, The Spectator (May 27, 2015) http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/05/as-a-gay-atheist-i-want-to-see-the-church-oppose-same-sex-marriage/

Julie Rodgers, Can the Gay be a Good? https://julierodgers.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/can-the-gay-be-a-good/

Bread and stones

Posted on by albrooke

stone

. . . which of you,
if your son were to ask for bread,
would give him a stone?
or if he were to ask for a fish,
would give him a snake?

If therefore, you, being evil people,
know how to give good gifts to your children;
how much more will your Father in heaven
give good gifts to those who ask him?

Jesus’ immediate point in Matthew 7:9-11 is that if earthly fathers are reasonably unlikely to play such a grotesque practical joke on their children, God can be expected to respond to good requests with good, not trickery.

But when Jesus had stones instead of bread, what did he do?  He accepted it as something from God.  Obviously, I’m thinking about chapter 4, the temptation of Jesus in the desert — is that relevant here?  I think it is.

If I see a stone on my plate, instead of jumping to the conclusion that God is angry with me, I might contemplate the possibility that God’s immediate purpose is not the satisfaction of my hunger.

He might have something else in mind.

Moderate virtue?

Posted on by albrooke

They call you an extremist if you want integration now — which is the only morally defensible position.  To advise moderation is like going to a stickup man and saying to him, ‘Don’t use a gun.  That’s violent.  Why not be a pickpocket instead?  A moderate is a moral pickpocket.

Branch Rickey (09/22/1957) quoted in Roger Kahn, Rickey and Robinson 171 (2014).

This reminds me of the Goldwater slogan “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”  (1964 speech).  I suppose that few would support both men’s views.

Both Rickey and Goldwater are smuggling in their certainty about justice and injustice.  Which, if they are right . . . .

Learning to learn

Posted on by albrooke

“Another fantasy of liberal education is that the student who advances to the university should take up the study that interests him most. For a small number of students this is in the main right. Even at a very early stage of school life, we can identify a few individuals with a definite inclination towards one group of studies or another. The danger for these unfortunate ones is that if left to themselves they will overspecialize, they will be wholly ignorant of the general interests of human beings. We are all in one way or another naturally lazy, and it is much easier to confine ourselves to the study of subjects in which we excel. But the great majority of the people who are to be educated have no very strong inclination to specialize, because they have no definite gifts or tastes. Those who have more lively and curious minds will tend to smatter. No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest – for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”

— T. S. Eliot (1932) reblogged from Alan Jacobs, More than 95 Theses (http://ayjay.tumblr.com/).

If you aren’t already watching out for anything Alan Jacobs writes, you should be.  (This quotation of Eliot’s reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote about the test of being well read being whether you could find something to interest you on the discount table at any used bookshop.)

Roger Kahn’s latest

Posted on by albrooke

Rickey&Robinson,

Roger Kahn has been known as one of our premier baseball writers since the publication, in 1972 of the classic Boys of Summer.  This newest book is a strikingly personal account of the integration of baseball — not as though by a historian, but by an actual participant.  Well worth reading!

http://www.amazon.com/Rickey-Robinson-Untold-Integration-Baseball/dp/1623362970/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1433350499&sr=1-1&keywords=rickey+and+robins