From The Palmer Report:
When this weekend's Supreme Court's disgustingly anti-American rulings came down, all I could think of to say at the time was that it was a dark day, and that it would motivate us even more to keep fighting and winning the battles we can win. But now it turns out there may be a remarkably surprising silver lining in all of this.
One of the things that's stood out to me over the past several years is just how incompetent the Republicans and the right wing leaders have become in their villainy. For instance, just seven or eight years ago, House Republicans were savvy enough to craft the kinds of phony scandals and sham hearings that could gain mainstream traction and rally support for their causes. These days House Republicans can't even get anyone to watch their hearings.
Now it turns out the right wing dark money cabal that keeps putting cases in front of the Supreme Court has also gotten rather… shall we say unsavvy with its antics. It turns out one of the cases they put in front of the Supreme Court wasn't even a real case. The woman who won the case claimed that she'd been asked to create a wedding website for a gay man named "Stewart" but it went against her beliefs. Now multiple major news outlets have confirmed that the "Stewart" in question is actually a straight man who never even tried to hire her.
According to established precedent, this should invalidate the entire case, and the Supreme Court's ruling should be nullified. Of course this rogue Supreme Court does just whatever it wants and routinely violates the law, so there's no reason to expect that it'll do the right thing here. But even if this doesn't get rectified, this is a scandal that's going to have legs.
If we're tasked with convincing the general public to get behind expanding the Supreme Court –and with convincing the general public to elect enough Democrats in 2024 to put expansion on the table – what better argument than the fact that the current Supreme Court is so damn corrupt it's issuing extremist rulings in imaginary cases?
This is a corrupt enough scandal that the average person doesn't even need to know or understand what the case was about in order to understand that this Supreme Court is insanely out of control. Clarence Thomas and his psychotic pals literally used a fake case as an excuse to rule against basic civil rights. Even if it turns out they didn't know it was a fake case, their refusal to void their own ruling will mean they don't care that it's a fake case.
I obviously wish the Supreme Court had simply ruled the correct way on this case to begin with, for obvious reasons. There are a lot of people who are going to get screwed out of their basic rights by this psychotic ruling. And I'm still hoping the Supreme Court will do the right thing and invalidate this ruling now that it's been exposed as a fake case – but we know that's not likely to happen.
Instead the only solace we can take here is that these psychopaths on the Supreme Court, and the people pull their strings, got so brazenly greedy that they got sloppy. They took a case all the way to the top without even bothering to make sure it was real. If they'd done their homework, they could have picked some other homophobic bigot's case to get behind instead.
So thanks, assholes, for the gift. Thanks for being so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid in your villainy. Thanks for making it so easy for us to go out and convince mainstream Americans that this Supreme Court majority needs to be obliterated at the ballot box. We're going to use this as part of our messaging when we go out there and win every competitive election up and down the ballot in the upcoming election cycle. We're going to put in the work and we're going to win big. Let's be more determined about this than ever.
The "Palmer Report" makes some valid points which can be talking points in advocating for Democrats in the future. And the impact of the ruling is not fully realized until one considers it puts things back into the 1950s as to "denial of service" against anybody the business owner might not like, for whatever reason, even "You don't go to the same church I do". In the end, it is NOT just about the LGBTQ+ community, but about everyone. Religious freedom is not the real issue, although that's what is claimed.
Any business owner, when they open a business, should know that over time, they will contact people they might not like. Something all of them will have to deal with, sooner or later. HOW they deal with it defines them. As consumers, WE have the determination of where WE spend our money. In the same way the anti-woke operatives seem to throw their influence around.
It has seemed that most of the "service denial" litigation has centered on LGBTQ+ people allegedly seeking to compel straight people to build their wedding cakes or similar, exclusively. Rather, as people of color before them, they should probably seek out other businesses which seek the business of LGBTQ+ community members FIRST?
The other side of the deal is that LGBTQ+ friendly businesses should advertise in "community" media too. Let potential customers know the businesses exist and want the business of LGBGTQ+ people.
It's a basic principle of being in business that "If somebody wants to give you money, you find a way to take care of the customer's needs in exchange for their money". IF the web designer, cake maker, or whomever is a good Christian, that means they should be making their weekly/monthly tithe to the church. More profits, more money to tithe, it would seem.
A legal expert has noted that the Supreme Court Justices who ruled FOR the web designer do not have to answer to anybody other than themselves, but the Colorado lawyers who brought the case to the SC can have to answer to their state judiciary operatives for pushing the "imaginary" case as far as they did. It will be interesting to see how that works out!
The "Shame of it All" is not that the SC Justices wrecked decades of non-discriminatory orientations and policies, the real shame is that the average citizen will not care. It does not or will not affect THEM, so "What's the big deal?", they might say. Just as they might say "The climate is going to change anyway, I can't do anything to stop that". Until the insurance premium costs for their home increases to the point they can't afford it or the company chooses to not cover them . . . due to "excessive losses in that part of the country". Just as with climate change, when that happens, it's too late to do anything about it.
IF the Republicans are allowed to continue down their fascist-oriented rabbit hole, taking the country with them, it's OUR fault for not doing a better job of proving how wrong they have become. My hope is that at some time in the near future, Republicans will suddenly realize how much they do not need Donald Trump for anything!! That with some effort, they CAN effectively lead and work with others of differing orientations to the benefit of all, period.
As long as Trump is alive and active, they will probably blindly follow him as in the past. Not realizing just how far HE has conned THEM to worship him. When they might finally realize that, it'll be too late.