Regarding the Supreme Court's Gay Marriage Semi-Decisive Non-Decision

Look, one way to see the Supreme Court's refusal to hear any appeals to the federal court cases that gave a big thumbs up to same-sex marriage in 5-11 states is to celebrate. Holy hot cock-on-cock action, we're up to 60% of the nation where Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts can marry whomever they choose and whomever chooses them and get all the benefits and pain that comes after. Groovy.

And it's sure fun to watch conservatives lose their tiny brains over it. Sen. Ted Cruz's head pretty much exploded as he claimed that "This is judicial activism at its worst." So if one does nothing, one is engaged in judicial activism. If the Supreme Court had overruled the three other courts, would that have been judicial activism? Answer the question, you fuckin' charlatan. He goes on, "Unelected judges should not be imposing their policy preferences to subvert the considered judgments of democratically elected legislatures." Except the justices didn't impose anything. One supposes it's easier to get pissed off at the nine Supreme Court justices than to attempt to explain the way that appeals courts work to the dumbasses who might actually support the constitutional amendment proposed by Ted Cruz, who looks like a crow who wants to sell you life insurance.

We could do all kinds of tea-leaf reading about the court's inaction. Was it saying that none of the cases was decent enough to take on, despite the Attorneys General of 30 states asking the court to make up its goddamned mind? Was it saying that a patchwork of state decisions, up to the whims of whatever court rules on it, is better than a uniform national right? Was it saying that it's just sick of the culture wars and that it's too busy making sure that corporations are protected to worry about your queer asses? Was the court too concerned about moving too fast, despite the fact that the nation is more than ready to hold the hands of same sex partners and jump over the broom, stomp the glass, ride an elephant, rub Buddha's belly, sacrifice a goat to pagan demons, whatever the fuck other religions do? Or were the justices, the conservative justices, in particular, just being total quivering pussies about it?

The nutzoid evangelicals at the Family Research Council (motto: "Yeah, Jesus hung out all the time with a bunch of dudes. So? What about it?") have chimed in with what they think is up: "As disappointing as the Supreme Court's silence is, the good news is that the debate over same-sex 'marriage' will continue. With 92 cases on marriage flooding the courts, conservatives have a chance to push back and demand that Congress step in where SCOTUS has not." Those quotation marks around "marriage" should make you wanna bunch someone right in their "God Hates Fags" stupid face.

The Rude Pundit is with people on the left and the right who think that the Supreme Court totally punked out on this. As the New York Times wrote, "Every day that the justices do not declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, a child in San Antonio feels confusion and shame that her fathers cannot get married; a woman in Atlanta is prohibited from making emergency medical decisions for her life partner; a man in Biloxi, Miss., is denied veteran’s survivor benefits after his husband dies." What the court did yesterday was imply that a gay couple in Indiana deserves more rights than a gay couple in Texas.

Yeah, yeah, it's sweet that we can sit back and say, smugly, "Hey, look at all these generally beautiful people getting married. Isn't that a great thing?" We can posit that the court's "wisdom" is to make same-sex marriage so regular, as if once the lube spills out of the bottle, it's impossible to put it back in.

But by not deciding, the court left in the air the security of thousands and thousands of Americans. Because however much you may believe everything is fine and safe, there's still that nagging feeling that one day, perhaps not too far in the future, Anthony Kennedy and the four really, really conservative justices can take it away.