Photo credit: Supreme Court of the United States
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The times, we’re repeatedly told, are unprecedented. Now, on top of everything else, we are facing yet another unprecedented political moment. Barely five weeks before the election, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Her passing marked Rosh Hashana 2020 with shofars sounding in tribute. It left also the future of the court a likely conservative 6-3 majority.
We had all hoped RBG would be with us until January 20 to ensure a liberal replacement under what would have been hopefully a Democratic president. The initial responses to the news of her death from my circle of friends ranged from despair to pleas for those still complaining about Joe Biden or hanging on to their Green aspirations to finally understand the implications of intransient self-righteousness.
Anyone paying attention to the bigger picture realized the taking control of the judiciary has always been the conservative goal. For Republicans, their leader’s moral failings override his role as the useful idiot to this end. It was their successful anti-Clinton campaign of 2016 which vilified her and, however falsely, created a narrative that many Democrats fell for, hook, line and sinker.
Meanwhile, all of the potential nominees on the regime wish-list to replace RBG are on record for their animus towards the LGBTQ community. Of those, a woman will probably be the candidate. Two are at the top of the list. The likely candidates, Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa, are both current Federal judges and have already been vetted in the process leading to their judicial appointments.
Regime Cheerleaders
They have also been vetted by Lambda Legal. Barrett was found to be an avowed opponent of marriage equality. Lagao, too, has been identified as an extreme ideologue and regime cheerleader. She is also Cuban American so her nomination would help garner Hispanic voter support, especially in Florida, a crucial battleground state.
What is at stake? Ginsburg’s legacy is largely regarded in the context of her advocacy for the dignity. That translated into her iconic status in the struggle for civil rights, particularly of women and LGBTQs. Undoing her achievements in that realm would be the goal of an extremist Supreme Court.
LGBTQ rights may be overshadowed by the 200,000 dead of the COVID-19 pandemic, by the struggle for racial equality and the election. However, they are far from forgotten by those who are continuously and relentlessly fighting to end marriage equality and any other advances in LGBTQ equality that have been achieved in the past 50+ years since Stonewall. Putting an end to marriage equality is part of the GOP platform. That reality should be enough to confirm the GOP strategy in the culture war to end LGBTQ life as we know it.
The Supreme Court vacancy also shifts the tone for conservatives who may have begun to sour on the Republican candidate. For conservatives who voted for the current regime with hopes of overturning Roe v Wade and Marriage Equality, they can, as in 2016, swallow the moral absence of their candidate in deference to the grander scheme of achieving power at any cost to enforce their white, straight agenda.
When her husband died, Ruth Bader Ginsburg immediately went back to the court to work. Her husband would have wanted it that way, she said. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to end the regime she herself opposed. She would have wanted it that way.
To read more My LGBTQ POV columns by Paul Masterson, click here.
