At last the opinions have been published for the two key cases this Supreme Court Session. You know which two I’m talking about: Obamacare, otherwise known as King v Burwell, and nation-wide gay marriage, otherwise known as Obergefell v Hodges. As previously predicted with the former, the Supremes found for the government. And in a narrow victory with a tepid dissent from Roberts, the courts have now mandated same-sex marriage in all fifty states. To my thinking, that’s akin to Brown v Board of Education in what conservatives call judicial activism. Reasonable people call it doing the right thing. Guess it all depends on your perspective.

Justice Roberts wrote the opinion in King, which I expected would be written by Kennedy. Kennedy did write in Obergefell, and Roberts dissented, but purely on the basis of states rights, and with lots of conciliatory comments about the plaintiff’s case. The feds weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs in Obergefell, not surprising but not necessarily helpful. All I can say is: it’s about bloody damn time.

I started looking at cases involving gay rights back in the 90’s, and was surprised and amazed to find that homosexuals had no civil rights whatsoever. The rampant discrimination and physical abuse suffered by gays all these years is a national travesty not unlike slavery. I watched the movie Pride the other night, a British picture about gays in London supporting Welsh miners in their struggles against the conservative Thatcher epoch. It was an uplifting and heartfelt piece, well acted by the usual suspects (Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West) as well as a few new faces. But my point in mentioning it is that even a dorky country like Britain dealt with the issue of gay rights 25 years ago. The U.S., having been ruled for by Republicans and politicized Democratic Presidents, has neglected to address the issue in that time frame. So I say again: it’s about bloody damn time. Better late than never? Nay, I say nay. Too much water over the dam to be so forgiving. I’d like to believe this is a beginning of a new era in freedom and life choice, but gentle reader, you and I both know better. Recent multiple events in South Carolina and the fact that Lousiana is still holding off on issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples says otherwise. It will continue to be a long, painful struggle to change hearts and minds. Look how long it took the south to integrate schools. Another shameful episode in our history, replete with shameful episodes. Makes you wonder how we can be called Land of the Free or – even worse – Home of the Brave. We are neither brave nor free. Many of us – in particular southern, disenfranchised, young white men, are caught up in fear and loathing, subsequently acting out with the most hateful and virulent violence imaginable. I’m not sanguine about our country’s prospects.

Now as to the opinion in King v Burwell, as I’ve written in previous posts. I expected the government to win. The only minor surprise was that Roberts wrote the opinion, and that it was a 6 to 3 majority instead of the usual 5/4. Maybe this will discourage other knuckleheads from continuing their fruitless effort to derail what will now become established law. The Roberts decision was quite ordinary in pursuing the line of thinking that is about giving the legislative branch every benefit of the doubt. He looked to the ‘whole cloth’ of the opinion to find that Congress would never have intended to deprive policyholders that qualified for subsidies in states that had federal versus state exchanges. As I mentioned previously, I doubt the Feds would have had to set up exchanges if those red state governors and legislatures hadn’t refused to do so. But it’s over, and the person who benefits the most from this decision? You know – the Jebber. He’s breathing a giant sigh of relief, notwithstanding his comment that:

“This fatally-flawed law imposes job-killing mandates, causes spending in Washington to skyrocket by $1.7 trillion, raises taxes by $1 trillion and drives up healthcare costs,” Bush said. “Instead of fixing our healthcare system, it made the problems worse.”

There’s no telling where he got that factoid, since I couldn’t find anything like it on the ‘net. But I did find another factoid: from 2001 to 2007 – the George W. Bush years – over $4 trillion was added to the federal deficit, primarily from tax cuts for wealthy individuals and the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By those measures, Obama just isn’t trying hard enough to spend. But the Jebber will fix it all. Right?