Robertsychosis

As you'd expect, the Roberts nomination has already brought out the big guns on the right and left. Unfortunately, the first shots are going into the ground. At 8:59 pm (CST) on Wednesday - what, two hours after Bush's annnouncement? - I already received an email from the Human Rights Campaign, a worthy organization dedicated to GLBT rights. HRC states that "we have serious concerns about [Roberts'] judicial philosophy regarding the constitutional right to privacy and legal protections for GLBT Americans."

This is undoubtable, and the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee must scrutinize Roberts' views on this and other human-rights issues. We don't want somebody who "legislates from the bench" (as someone else said today) about this or other liberties which many Americans firmly support.

But the HRC goes on to claim, ludicrously, that

The Supreme Court will have the LAST WORD on the constitutionality of marriage for same-sex couples in America; the LAST WORD on the constitutionality of GLBT-inclusive hate crimes laws; the LAST WORD on whether GLBT Americans can serve openly in our military.

This sort of ridiculousness isn't accurate, much less true or helpful. Making muddleheaded claims like this will make it that much harder to make authentic claims about Roberts. The Constitution is a legal framework for balancing citizens' rights against state power, and the sovereign people - you, me, that jerk down the block, even brown people and Red Staters - still have the right and duty to decide just what is or is not constitutional. That's what amendments are for. Pretending, and claiming, that a conservative SCOTUS nominee will once-and-for-all decide any of the listed issues is silly and destructive - not to mention as asinine as the wingnuts' claims about the court banning Christianity or some such bullshit.

Surely, if a Roberts court does restrict the liberty for all Americans, it would be - will be? - that much more difficult to ratify a Constitutional amendment affirming the equality under the law of all Americans, no matter whom they fall in love with (though, come to think of it...). But amending the Constitution is always an option - the option, in fact. It's written right into Article V of the Constitution itself.

The abolitionists succeeded with the Thirteenth Amendment in forever banning the evil of slavery; civil-rights crusaders succeeded with the Twenty-fourth Amendment in forbidding a heinous way of preventing African-Americans from voting (and with using good, old-fashioned legislation to enforce the Second Bill of Rights, Amendments 13, 14, and 15) Hanging everything on Roberts, or the next justice, forecloses options that we liberals must keep open. Is it too much to say that the future of the Republic depends on it?