President Biden has been criticized by progressive activists for his lack of focus on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and pro-lifers rejoicing over said ineffectuality would have to agree.
First, there was his “angry shout of surrender” of an executive order. Now, evidence is emerging that Biden never deigned to so much as skim the opinion of the Court.
The Supreme Court made it clear after they overturned Roe: the basic right to privacy – right up to marrying who you love – is at risk.
Last night, 47 Republicans and all House Democrats took an important step to codify every American’s right to marry into law.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 20, 2022
Did the Supreme Court make it clear that “the right to marry” is at risk? Here’s what Justice Alito, writing for the majority, says about the dissent’s identification of Obergefell v. Hodges — the 2015 decision that established the right to same-sex marriage — among others, as a precedent threatened by Dobbs.
Perhaps this is designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights, but the dissent’s analogy is objectionable for a more important reason: what it reveals about the dissent’s views on the protection of what Roe called “potential life.” The exercise of the rights at issue in Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell does not destroy a “potential life,” but an abortion has that effect.
Later, the majority opinion reiterates this point:
Finally, the dissent suggests that our decision calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Post, at 4–5, 26–27, n. 8. But we have stated unequivocally that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
“It is hard to see how we could be clearer” is tacked on to emphasize the point. One justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote in his concurrence that the Court should “reconsider” the holding of Obergefell, but he is one of nine justices.
For same-sex marriage supporters still not feeling sanguine, consider that Justice Kavanaugh — who would necessarily have to be a part of any majority to overturn Obergefell — wrote to “emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents [Obergefell, Griswold, etc.], and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.”
If I were a Democrat, I’d be upset too; this is a president who hasn’t so much as read the most devastating legal setback for progressivism in generations nearly a month after its issuance.