By Brigitte L. Nacos
Clarence Thomas, an intellectual lightweight, had according to one of his own clerks one overriding mission, when he entered the Supreme Court: “The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years,” he said, “and I'm going to make their lives miserable for 43 years." Last week, on two consecutive days, he accomplished that and some more: Within 24 dramatic hours, the highest court increased and decreased the authority of states significantly pointing in both cases to the U.S. Constitution as they (1) took away the states’ power to protect Americans’ lives by striking down modest gun-control measures and (2) gave states the control over women’s reproductive decisions by overruling the nearly 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade decision. The Court claimed to rely in both these contrary decisions on the US Constitution. Incredible.
Thomas, the most radical among his reactionary peers, left no doubt that he wants to make liberals even more miserable: He signaled in a concurrent opinion that he wants the SCOTUS majority to outlaw any birth control measures, consensual relation between gay persons, and, for sure, gay marriage. The three-judge minority dissented “in sorrow” as they put it. Many women share that sorrow.
In her column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd describes the line-up of male characters who gained power during the years “by trading away something that meant little to them compared with their own stature: the rights of women." This road put Thomas, now the most influential Supreme Court Justice, into his current power position on the Court. All this began with his nomination by President George H.W. Bush. It was no secret that Thomas was an arch-conservative. But Bush disregarded the long pro-choice position of his family to please pro-life conservatives in his party and win African-American support for nominating a Black to the highest court. His son, George W. Bush, appointed Justice Samuel Alito, who has been a life-long Pro-Life fanatic. And in an unimaginable irony, it was left to Donald Trump to put three (!!!) super-conservatives onto the Court—of course, with the machinations of GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell who conned the Democrats and the American people. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Democrats more than once let him get away with—and much more.
During Thomas’s confirmation hearings, Joe Biden, then chairing the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, presided over the destruction of Anita Hill who testified—in the view of many women credibly--that her former boss Clearance Thomas had, as Dowd puts it, tormented her “with unwanted attention and dirty talk about the pornographic films he liked to watch.” In other words, the one-time sex-harasser and pornography addict is now part of the SCOTUS majority that dictates morality according to the standards of the Middle Ages from which Justice Samuel Alito draws repeatedly in his sub-standard opinion.
Several of the justices in the majority lied to the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and to individual Senators, among them Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, when asked about Roe vs. Wade. Perhaps that is not surprising, since they were appointed by the liar-in-chief Donald Trump. But it is nevertheless mind-boggling that among the highest and most influential guardians of our laws and the US Constitution here are several justices who swore to tell the truth in their confirmation hearings—and once they got on the Court--they lied!
If America wants to stop Thomas and his fellow radicals from making their lives more miserable, they need to be just as relentless advocates of their rights as Thomas and Co. are determined to take those rights away from them.
Protesting peaceful, relentlessly, and voting for local, state, and federal candidates committed to repeal SCOTUS decisions via contrary legislation are the right ways to fight back.
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