Rick Santorum, as interviewed by Rachel Maddow last night. Two thoughts:
1. Yes, we live in an America where the "American people" (or, more precisely, a majority of same) have the final word. And if the American people want to legally ban marriage equality, or homosexuality, or pretty much anything you can name (alcohol, Christianity, wearing white after Labor Day) … by amending the US Constitution, which was intentionally set up as being something deucedly difficult to do. Because making fundamental legal changes at a whim is an awful way to run a country.
(The other way they can is equally difficult — over time, the majority can elect enough presidents and confirming senators to get enough Supreme Court justices on board to rule the way they want on an issue. Santorum kind of alluded to this, and it's a tactic the Right has been fairly successful with over time, aided and abetted by GOP gerrymandering in 2010.)
2. The idea of Congress just passing laws that won't pass constitutional muster because maybe the justices will have changed their mind … is exactly what I would expect a Republican member of our present Congress to suggest, given how they've legislated over the past several years.
3. Santorum seems to suggest that we shouldn't deem sexual orientation as genetic because that opens up the possibility of abortions to select against it, which he thinks would be a bad idea. And I agree that would be a really bad reason to have an abortion, but it's also a bad reason to make a scientific judgment.
I have no doubt that Santorum will not be the GOP nominee this year. That his ideas are out there at the moment and part of the GOP debate (and, honestly, not drawing any criticism from within the GOP) is a lot more bothersome. Maybe, after this election cycle, he'll go away.
One can only hope he goes away!
+Dave Hill There is no gay gene.
+CrisVangel1958 Certainly there doesn't appear to be a singular gene that leads to homosexual orientation. There are probably a combination of genes that have some influence, and potentially some congenital causes as well. It's been a while since I read the latest research.
+Dave Hill Wait a minute! Appointing justices that vote your way has been done over and over by both parties. Don't make this a Republicans did it issue.
Next, when they didn't get what they wanted to confirm, Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden sat up there and tried to crucify Clarence Thomas. They went after Robert Bork and will go after viciously whoever doesn't agree with the liberal narrative.
Of course there's no gay gene. But as Rachel alluded to in her interview, none of us, straight or gay are given the option to choose who we are attracted to. In most cases. We are born male or female, and sometimes we are taught masculinity or femininity, but as far as who we are naturally attracted to, you might as well flip a coin.
The point is you shouldn't have to go thru public humiliation, torment, torture, depression, job loss, etc.
+Jeh Jeh I didn't mean to imply that appointing ideologically desirable judges has been a tactic used only by the GOP. It has been an explicit long-term strategy from the Right in federal courts over time, vs being an exploitable happenstance, though.
You are correct that SCOTUS nominations over the past 20-30 years have been much more intensely scrutinized and emotionally debated, by both sides (the confirmation hearings of both Sotomayor and Kagan were hardly walks in the park).
That said, intense criticism of Bork was fully justified by his reactionary originalist views (which eventually got onto the court through others like Scalia and Thomas), and which let him suggest that poll taxes were legitimate and federal civil rights laws and a constitutional right to privacy were not.
Clarence Thomas' record on the bench has, I think, post facto also justified the criticisms leveled at him during the confirmation hearing. That hearing was a political circus from both sides of the spectrum.
Good work Mr. +Dave Hill