The United States Supreme Court has, as almost all the serious SCOTUS watchers predicted, declined to take on the case of Davis v. Ermold. The “Davis” in this case was Kim Davis, the clerk in a Kentucky government office who refused to issue a marriage license to two men. Her stance wound up getting her briefly jailed and then she lost a lawsuit from one of the gay couples she denied and has been fighting a $360,000 judgment against her.’
Some websites in recent months have been fretting (or hoping) that the high court would take on this case, thereby allowing the current makeup of that court to grab the opportunity to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. That was the decision that cleared the way for same-sex marriage in this country — you know: The decision that was supposed to mark an end to America as we knew it and to bring God’s (or someone’s) wrath down upon us all for Biblical Immorality. So far, I haven’t seen much of that wrath and the institution of marriage seems fairly unscathed.
But there are still folks out there fighting that battle. In some cases, they seem to earnestly believe that the future of Mankind is at stake if folks of like gender continue to wed. Some, I get the feeling, merely want to erase the “loss.” That’s a lot of what MAGA is all about: They feel they have to win every battle, no matter what’s it about, to prove that they run this country. In this instance, my Cynical Side (which often posts on this blog) thinks what we had here was a good, old-fashioned Max Bialystock con job: Get people to donate to a certain-to-lose cause and keep the money.
The Supreme Court said they would not hear the case and there were no announced dissents. Even Clarence Thomas, because apparently no one was bribing him to do so, didn’t say, “Wait a minute!” This court at this time has zero interest in relitigating Obergefell — and if they did, they’d wait for a case that was more about the core issues of that dispute. Ms. Davis’s appeal to the highest court in the land was to try and argue that she shouldn’t be penalized for sticking to her moral principles. As I understand it, the part of the suit that might have given the Supremes an opening to revoke Gay Marriage was kind of tacked onto the original suit later.
I’m guessing the add-on was because there was money to be made there. Not very many people were willing to donate to say Kim Davis should be allowed to not issue marriage licenses. Not many people would ever be in the position of having to do that. So the cause became “This is our chance to destroy Same-Sex Marriage but we need money to do this!”
Now, I could be wrong. Maybe my Cynical Side is just being too cynical. That’s hard to be in the current political environment but maybe — just maybe — the funds collected did all go for the purpose the donors believed. And maybe they still would have sent money if they’d known how unlikely it was that the Supreme Court was going to reopen the matter but they took the chance anyway. After all, Springtime for Hitler did rather well. Even a guaranteed flop just might be a hit…but in this case, I don’t think so.
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