(from here (en.wikipedia.org))
What does a judge do? Well, judges read laws. Supposedly, they try to understand what the writers of a law intended. Then they apply the meaning of a law to an actual situation. Unfortunately, some judges do not have the wisdom to read the law as written. Instead of just applying the meaning of a law as written, some judges “rewrite” a law by changing the meaning of words. What follows is an example of judges changing the meaning of one word, in this case the word “sex”.
Here are some news articles on the big, earthshattering, milestone, landmark case.
- Ruling on LGBTQ rights once again reveals precarious nature of Supreme Court’s conservative majority (usatoday.com)
- In landmark case, Supreme Court rules LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination (nbcnews.com)
- Shannon Bream breaks down Supreme Court’s big LGBT rights decision: ‘This is going to be a big change’
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Citizen Tom 
Tom
The gay ruling of equal rights of employment is no guarantee of being selected among applicants to be hired.
In actuality, the SCOTUS decision may turn out to be more detrimental to gays being considered by employers who make the actual choices of who they select from a number of applicants.
While no employer will state what he will consider to prevent lawsuits, he will consider some of the following risks before he makes a selection,
If a person is a gay male, the risk factor of him obtaining HIV/Aids is higher than straight and may be a factor to increase group health insurance foot the employer
And it he gay turns out in time to have to be laid off or fired instead of someone else, the risk of age lawsuit accusation now is going to be a gravy train new opportunity for lawyers.
The court decision may be more sad than glad.
As for a private secular Christian school hiring a gay teacher to teach opposite values than his personal blues or example, that was not included in the decision and will certainly be a first amendment challenge, in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging,
@Scatterwisdom
This article (https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/supreme-court-validates-lgbt-protections-on-grounds-lgbt-activists-reject/), one of the references I included, explains another reason the sexually confused won’t like the decision. These people want us to believe sex is not a fixed characteristic. With respect to this subject, at least, the sexually confused are not rational. Logical law has nothing to do with it.
Follow the money. This is about getting money from the lawyers and the LGBTQ for the Democratic Party.
What motivated Roberts and Gorsuch? Who knows. Trump hatred and virtue signaling are as good a guess as any. Keeping the news media and radicals out of their hair would do it too. Neither may have the grit required for the job, but they crave the prestige.
Tom,
Interesting article to question what the legal definition of sex is or is not.
Mind boggling in my opinion. We pass a law to protect a” boundary line without no visible marking stones.”
Can be related to the ancient proverb advice in a way, in my opinion.
Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.(Proverb 22:29)
Even more mind boggling after reading a article this AM asking for advice by a grandparent today in the Chicago Tribune.
A grandparent asks for advice about the wife of their divorced son insisting their born male grandson makes the grandson wear girls clothes in her house. Her r son makes him wear boys clothes in his house.
The advice to the grandparents is not to interfere and just treat the child with grandparent love.,
How would King Solomon judge this one?
, I can only wonder would he call for a sword to split the child in half or …………………?
Regards and goodwill blogging.
@Scatterwisdom
Every day it becomes easier to understand why there was a great flood, and Noah had to build an ark.
Some people think that if God flooded the entire world God is evil. These people don’t understand that as the people of the world grew more evil the harm each generation did to its children grew.
Tom,
I linked your post to mine on this subject.
I agree about this issue as being harmful to children. based on the link in your post about a transgender regrets.
https://rudymartinka.com/2020/06/18/child-transgender-sex-conundrum-king-solomon-blog/
Regards and goodwill blogging.
I think most people have a good deal of trouble understanding how hard it is to apply legislation or the Constitution to actual present day facts. It is easy to find an argument that matches one’s own opinion, whether it agrees or disagrees with the Court’s holding. Perhaps a way that you might understand this better would be to analyze majority’s opinion with regard to whether or not it is consistent with some methodology of legal interpretation.
Without getting at the substance of the ruling or whether a given methodology of legal interpretation is the best, let me just say that Gorsuch is a textualist, meaning that he focuses on the clear present day language of the law first, without regard to original intent.
For example, did the Founders and Framers imagine weapons beyond flintlocks when they wrote the second amendment? The justice who focuses on original intent might say that the Framers could not have imagined the destructive power of modern day assault weapons when they used the word “arms”, and therefore only the right to own single shot flintlocks is protected. A textualist, by contrast, would allow the basic definition of “arms” to expand over time as arms technology advanced.
Gorsuch is a textualist. If you read the opinion, you’ll see that he makes a textualist argument and uses that theory of judicial review to counter to the argument that you are making that only the meaning of the word “sex” at the time of the writing of the law should apply.
I kind of admire Gorsuch’s legal consistency, whether or not I agree with his methodology or his holding. Beyond just this clarification to your post, I don’t really have anything else to say on this. I think we beat that horse to death already.
@tsalmon
A one time the word “gay” meant something very different. If we deliberately ignore that fact when we are reading something published before 1920 we are either being an idiot or trying to be comical. Even in 1964, most people had not yet begun to associate “gay” with same-sex sex. In 1964, the LGBTQ agenda existed in only a very few disturbed minds. Now it has been popularized to lots of disturbed minds.
Textualism is only defensible if a judge takes the trouble to find out the PLAIN meaning of the words in a law at the time that law was written. That quite obviously did not happen in this case. In 1964 Americans still applauded the difference between the two sexes. Now, thanks to activist judges, even applauding the difference between the sexes has become sexist.
I’m not sure what your point is. The plain meaning of the word “gay” (in one current connotation) is a same “sex” preference, just as the plain meaning of the word “arms” today would include military style assault rifles. Textualism looks at current plain meaning. I’m not a textualist, but I believe that their argument would be that, as words, technologies, economics and social mores evolve over time, it is not the job Court to “imagine” what a previous legislature or framer would have done with the new meaning. Their argument might be that, if the plain meaning has changed, it is up to current legislators to amend the law, and not for the Court to play whisperer for long past enactors. If you don’t like the law, change it. Don’t expect the Court to do the legislative job for you.
Like I said, textualism is not my favorite method of judicial review, but you’ve got to admire Gorsuch for his consistency in using it.
@tsalmon
So you don’t understand? Well, this article I referenced might help => https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/scotuss-transgender-ruling-firebombs-the-constitution/. What is sad is that I think there is a good chance Gorsuch voted for that nonsense just to undermine Trump. People can be so hateful.
Just for fun let’s make it personal using the old meaning of words.
1. You often describe yourself as a gay soul. I am glad you are not nice. I am also glad you are not fantastic. Instead, you are quite awful and most egregious. That probably explains why you are Kate’s bully. Perhaps that explains your prosperity. You and Kate are probably the least naughty of my brothers and sisters.
Nevertheless you puzzle me. You are an odd liberal since you do not believe in God-given rights. Thomas Jefferson would have wondered at that.
Anyway, I could go on, but this ought to keep you busy for a little while.
:-()
“Nevertheless you puzzle me. You are an odd liberal since you do not believe in God-given rights. Thomas Jefferson would have wondered at that.“
That is not exactly true. I don’t claim to know if God given rights exist or not. Because, unlike God given responsibilities, God given rights are a fairly modern invention that there does not seem to be any clear scriptural evidence to support, such belief seems to be an act of faith in some other theology that is not necessarily Christian.
God given rights appears to be a creature of the Enlightenment, not the Gospels. Need I remind you that Jefferson was a Deist?
In his latest book, Conservative Columnist George Will is also a big fan of such rights, but, because Will is an atheist, he calls them “natural rights” and argues that our evolution afforded them to us. Whether God given or natural, one wonders why, in all of the history of human civilization, these rights never seemed actually practically to happen unless written into laws by men, along with the institutions to arbitrate and enforce such rights. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
And maybe it’s also just a coincidence that God apparently only gives rights that match your peculiar political sentiments. Of course it’s just a coincidence, and not just an excuse to sacralize some folks’ petty politics. Nah that couldn’t be it, could it bro. That would be making an idol out of mere politics, wouldn’t it?
Oh well, thanks for the entertaining distraction. I guess Republicans selling their souls for a few Court appointees isn’t working out so well is it? Tell me more about how awful Gorsuch is – I’m all ears.
@tsalmon
I thought you would bite on that. Gave you an opportunity to change the subject. No doubt you were desperate to do that.
There is nothing new about God-given rights. When we speak of rights, we just speak positively of something very old. For example, God gave us a commandment against stealing because we have a right to own (or steward) those things over which God has given us responsibility. We just changed the way we speak of the same concept. Would the world change just because you chose to speak Russian instead of English?
Tom,
As long as you have given your views on mere manmade laws this the veneer of divinity, can you be more specific for God about which rights you have deemed that He conveniently afforded you? Is a patent right to produce a dildo a God given property right? Is the right to go copulate in the streets a God given liberty? Do the frail and elderly folks have a divine right to have their lives protected from infected folks who are also exercising their divine liberties? As for The pursuit of happiness, how do you presume on God’s behalf to define that?
I don’t disagree at all with your contention that God requires us to love one another, and in so doing, we generally should not rob, kill, lie to or otherwise betray those we love. However, you will have to remind where me in the Bible God specifically and directly affords specific detailed rights? Otherwise, this all sounds like a good deal of politically convenient and highly speculative polemics about the specifics of what you presume God affords you and what God does not afford others. It seems that it is difficult enough to live up to and agree on what are each our own God given responsibilities without turning our very specific and very human personal political and legal preferences in one fallible finite place in time and place in eternity into just an idol of an infinitely loving God.
Ok, I’ve played along with you long enough good brother. I can only assume that your reason for turning every discussion that you are losing into this same non-argument, is that you have built your whole political philosophy on this one foundation of shifting sand. Perhaps this is why you can never explain why these supposed God afforded rights, if they are so natural, magically only first appear in the 18th Century and not in the rest of the miserable history of human tyranny, and why they only exist as a practical matter when mere men enshrine them into very fallible human laws and the human institutions that enforce and arbitrate them.
@tsalmon
Mere man-made laws? You get in a huff and haughtly sniff your nose. Meanwhile, you have no trouble with politicians seizing all kinds of authority based upon what? Without God, how do you define right and wrong? Logic? Reason? That is all you have, and it has never worked. Honor, however, has. Thanks to their sense of honor the Greeks and later the Romans managed something that looked like republics for a little while.
Israel operated as a theocracy. The Old Testament served as their law, and the citizens of Israel understood they had rights. The New Testament does not trash the Old Testament. In fact, much of the New Testament is devoted to explaining the Old Testament. Why don’t you get you nose out of the stratosphere and the Bible. You are a lawyer. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, and I am tired of being ignored.
Haughtily sniff my nose? Ha, ha, ha!
I think you need to do some more study about the differences that took place between the old Law of the OT and the New Covenant of the NT, otherwise you make Jesus unnecessary. You should probably start with Paul’s writing on the subject of the Law. He was fairly clear on this.
As for God’s ultimate mandates toward love, I think that the flaw in your logic is assuming (for God) an involuntary reciprocity that, because God does not directly enforce it at law on Earth, you get to play God by presuming it yourself.
God asks us to love our neighbors and in so doing, not to steal from them, murder them, lie to them or commit any number of other sins against them. This what Jesus told us, and this is logically different from the rights that you are claim God gave you. Why?
First of all, you take away the voluntary nature of the act of loving. You make the assumption that the law should require me and everyone else to not murder someone out of love, but you must know that, if it is not completely voluntary, it’s not really love. We are even asked by God to voluntarily love our enemies. How does one mandate that at law? Furthermore, because my choice to love is voluntary so is MY choice not to rob that neighbor. In other words, out of love of God and my neighbor, I AM CHOOSING (not God) to afford him or her certain rights to property, life and liberty, etc. regardless of what the governmental law says.
Secondly, you assume a reciprocity that does not exist in the Bible or in life. Just because I do not steal out of a
voluntary choice to obey God and love my neighbor does not mean my neighbor has volunteered to love me so that that I can assume that God created a mandate to reciprocal property rights for me. That assumes that God’s command for my neighbor to love me back in kind is involuntary, and again, if it is not voluntary, then it is not love, is it?
The law enacted by a sovereign government defines what rights we have at law and other institutions of that same government arbitrate and enforce those rights. In so far as we wish those legal rights and responsibilities to be just, they will be defined, arbitrated and enforced out of our very human, very fallible, very troubled efforts to do so with love in mind. Let’s not fool ourselves that the Rule of Law is anything less human and any more divine than that. It amazing me that someone who distrusts government adopts much as you wishes to give it such supposedly divine sources.
@tsalmon
In the New Testament the ceremonial laws (sacrifices, primarily) and the dietary laws were set aside.
Why are the sacrifices no longer needed? Read Hebrews. That book explains that Christ’s death on the cross provided the perfect and final sacrifice. The sacrifices the Jews performed in the temple pointed to Jesus’ death on the cross.
Why were the dietary laws no longer necessary? Not entirely certain, but Peter had a vision (in the Book of Acts) that said they were not needed. That certainly made it easier to convert the Gentiles.
The moral laws, however, especially the Ten Commandments remain in force, and without Jesus these law alone would easily be enough to doom us to Hell. In fact, the moral laws are the most difficult to obey because they require us to love God and each other. Jesus’ makes that clear in the Sermon on the Mount when He explains what the Ten Commandments actually require of us.
You mention the Apostle Paul. I suppose you are talking about the Book of Romans. In Romans 7, Paul finally crystalizes the problem. Because of our fleshly desires, our fallen nature, we cannot obey the law. Did Jesus free us from the law? Not exactly. He freed us from our inability to obey the law. Consider how Chapter 8, probably the most joyful chapter in the Bible begins.
Consider the point of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit indwelt the Apostles and the believers around them. When as believers we try to please the spirit instead of our fleshly desires, we can obey the commandments of God. When we love God, we can obey Him.
Read Romans 13:1-7. Then consider how Jehoshaphat instructed his judges.
@tsalmon
Something else to think about.
The passage above is puzzling, but Romans 8:28 is also extremely difficult to understand.
We can err. We can interpret our rulers have the divine right to rule.
However, Proverbs 16:10 varies in meaning, depending upon the translation.
We need to select our rulers carefully. Since we have trouble acquiring wisdom, we also need to limit the power of our rulers.
Tom,
This is impressive. (And no I’m not being sarcastic). I’m continuously amazed at your grasp of scripture, and your writing abilities. It would take me hours, if not days, to do the research and write a response like that.
I’m not really certain what you think I’m disagreeing with you about. As you say, the OT Laws were both civil and religious for Jews at the time of Jesus. Given what you just wrote, I don’t think you want to empower government with the divine authority to enforce the hundreds of Commandments that make up Scriptural Law, to be governed by an officialdom who presided over us based upon “the law of sin and death” as Paul wrote, even if those officials were as wise as King Jehoshaphat implored them to be. Wouldn’t it be better if we governed ourselves by “the law of the Spirit” and elected leaders to govern our society who also appeared to be governed by the the indwelling Spirit of love? (As an aside, Trump???)
How do we tell if someone is governed by the law of the indwelling Spirit in Christ? Would it be someone who is strict, self righteous, excluding and judgmental? Or would it be someone who Is open, accepting, loving, and humble in her judgements, and who suffered over every difficult complex issue with incremental wisdom for the most loving, and therefore the most just, answers? Do you think that being in the Spirit means that a person is always right, or do you think that being in the Spirit means being in touch with the internal joy of a union with God that manifests in such love that the struggle for right becomes a labor of love, and a desire to share that joy, that “Good News”, with everyone else in the service of God?
Some days (but sadly, not every day) I look at the world and see God everywhere and in everyone. On those days, all the suffering of old age and family illness, the fear and the worry of impeding death, just melts away, and my heart nearly bursts in gratitude for all that God has given me, even the pain and the struggles that gave me what little wisdom God spent on me. Then my cross feels light enough for me to try to hold up another‘s.
I am not near done being shaped by the Spirit of Love, but I know what it looks like in the distance. I think you know it too, and compared to that destiny, all our squabbles about angels dancing on pin heads are only a pleasant distraction.
What were we discussing?
@tsalmon
If you read 1 Samuel 8, it is fairly obvious God wanted the Hebrews to let God rule them, not a king. That would have been some sort of theocracy, but we really don’t have the capacity to make such a thing work. Look at Judge Roberts and Judge Gorsuch. It is easy enough to predict which judges will legislate from the bench, but it is extremely difficult to find judges who will just read the law to mean what they honestly think it was written to say.
Jesus gave us the Great Commission. So, we should be working on a limited government that protects our right to share and live in accordance with our religious beliefs. That is something Trump has shown himself better at than H. Clinton ever would have been.
Gorsuch and Roberts interpretations are mostly consistent with the philosophies of judicial interpretation that they have used throughout their careers, and that they attested to at the time of their confirmation. Quite plainly, they ruled in keeping with those firmly held interpretive methodologies regarding the “plain language” of the law, although strangely enough, I think that it probably went against what they would have done if they felt that they had the power to rewrite the law. You might consider if you are the one being inconsistent – you apparently would not mind if they expanded the definition of “arms” in the 2nd Amendment to include modern day assault weapons, even though one can only guess if Framers intended weapons that can cause massive civilian casualties, if allowed in the hands of a madman, to be included.
Gorsuch used the plain modern day definitions of words in the law like “sex” and left it up to legislators to fix the law if the “intent” of the law had become arcane or had evolved. Like I said, I don’t agree with Gorsuch’s philosophy of judicial interpretation, but I admire his consistency. You apparently “feel” otherwise, but I am yet to hear an actual argument that Gorsuch isn’t exactly the package that you bought when Trump nominated him and a Republican Senate confirmed him. You seem to just be mad that Gorsuch betrayed his tribal loyalties when he instead stuck to his principles. Anyway, I don’t know what I’m defending Gorsuch for – why don’t you impeach the traitor and find someone more subservient, who, like Trump, will bend his principles in the shifting political whims of your little mob.
As for “limited government”, as usual you present a false choice. Just as almost no one is in favor of no government, virtually no one wants total government. And despite how plain it all appears to you, there is no bright line that even your own party ever agrees on (hence Gorsuch). In fact, by freeing LGBTQ from discrimination by government, the SCOTUS was actually limiting governmental power over people’s “sex” lives. And that’s the rub isn’t it?
You really want the government to regulate other people’s sexual preferences, don’t you? With all the terrible, destructive things people do to each other and themselves in this world, what is it about other peoples’ “sex” that gets political evangelicalism all out of joint all the time? As much as I am trying, I am imperfect Christian but my ideal for myself at least of a greater perfection in Christ doesn’t see me wanting to snoop around other people’s bedrooms and closets to judge their sex lives. Seriously, I don’t get it good brother.
@tsalmon
That’s not how Gorsuch defined his judicial philosophy, is the reason is that it is demonstrably, as I have demonstrated, too stupid.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/the-courts-literal-assault-on-textualism/amp/
That decision is based on an outright lie. If you admire Gorsuch, you have a problem.
A unique problem? I suppose not There is that ancient Greek philosopher who went upon a fruitless search for an honest man. It is why Jesus died upon that cross.
@tsalmon
BTW. We both know why you defended Gorsuch. You approve of the outcome, and getting the desired outcome is what you apparently what you think makes a good legal decision. Not smart. Not farsighted. No point in thoughtful legislation if a court can twist a law to suit its own purposes.
“BTW. We both know why you defended Gorsuch. You approve of the outcome, and getting the desired outcome is what you apparently what you think makes a good legal decision. Not smart. Not farsighted. No point in thoughtful legislation if a court can twist a law to suit its own purposes.”
No fair! That’s basically my argument with regard to you. BTW, I didn’t say that I admired Gorsuch. I said I admired his consistency, something that demagogues and ideologues on both sides seem to find impossible to deal with as soon as inconsistencies inevitably intrude to burst their bubbles.
Let’s look at this case another way:
First, let us set aside your objections to governmental regulation of discrimination in commercial activities. SCOTUS decided that one over a half a century ago and there is a mountain of precedent. Title VII expanded those governmental powers to include commercial discrimination based on “sex”.
Male on male SEX, female on female SEX, biSEXual, transSEXual, dressing and/or living as the opposite SEX would. If the commercial discrimination is not based upon SEX, then what exactly is it about? What is it that you find objectionable about LGBTQ, if it is not about SEX?
If it makes you feel any better, Gorsuch will probably use the same juris prudential logic to give you the outcome you desire on the next case. Until then, I guess that you might what to scream about DACA for a while now. Or perhaps what virtually every high level Republican who has left the Trump administration thinks about Trump? Or perhaps, the allegations in John Bolton’s book that Trump would sell out the whole country just to get re-elected?
You may wish Trump had been convicted by the Senate before the Trump debacle finally sweeps the current Republican Party into its sad corner of the dustbin of history.
@tsalmon
You wrote what you wrote.
I think it is ironic when fans of big government call other people ideologues.
I am not setting anything aside. Declare victory all you want. The battles won’t end until the Second Coming of Christ. In fact, they will get worse.
This is silly. We both know the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not cover the LGBTQ nonsense. The DACA decision is just blatantly absurd. Trump cannot cancel an executive order? This is bias. You want to complain about bias against people who cannot figure out how to use their sex organs? We both know this kind of bias from judges is undermining the civil order, and you know it is wrong. If you don’t, then you entirely wasted all that time you spent studying.