The Supreme Court justice is back to complaining about LGBTQ people in a recent opinion from the court.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is complaining that people who oppose homosexuality were being unfairly branded as bigots, despite that being a dictionary definition of bigotry.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a case about whether it is legal to exclude potential jurors based on their religion. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Jean Finney, who is lesbian, against her longtime employer, the Missouri Department of Corrections, for workplace discrimination and retaliation due to her sexuality. During jury selection for the trial, which Finney won, her lawyer asked the judge to remove three jurors who had expressed beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. Finney’s lawyer argued their religious beliefs would bias them against LGBTQ people.
The state of Missouri appealed the decision, arguing that the jury selection process had been discriminatory on religious grounds. An appeals court sided with Finney, ruling the jurors had been eliminated due to their beliefs about homosexuality, not because they were Christians. Missouri appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which declined Tuesday to hear the case.
In a statement, Alito said he agreed with the decision not to hear the lawsuit, but warned he felt the case was a harbinger of greater danger.
The appeals court ruling “exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges,” Alitio wrote, referring to the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized marriage equality.
“Namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government,” he said. “The opinion of the Court in that case made it clear that the decision should not be used in that way, but I am afraid this admonition is not being heeded by our society.”
If someone was fired from their job because of their race, and a potential juror on the case expressed their religious belief that the “mixing of races” is a sin (was a very common religious belief many people justified on the basis of their version of Christianity, and a belief many in the country still hold unfortunately), they should be thrown off that jury and rightfully so. This is no different. And don’t start with any of this “well they don’t think being gay is a sin just acting on it is a sin” nonsense, would be like saying being black isn’t a sin, just marrying outside your race or using the same water fountains as other races is a sin.
People who hold bigoted beliefs about their fellow Americans have no place on a jury for a case involving them, especially in a discrimination case, whether they believe their bigotry is rooted in religion or anything else.
The fact that Samuel Alito thinks they do belong on juries in cases like this says everything you need to know about him. He doesn’t think gay people deserve the same rights as everyone else, and he believes religious people (specifically his version of Christianity) have a right to use the law to trample the rights of others. Furthermore, he views the denial of the ability to trample other people’s rights he doesn’t like as some sort of discrimination against himself, in some kind of crazy warped logic.
Please don’t put words in my mouth to defend your argument, I never said anything about acting on gay desires being a sin. I said that there exists people who believe that everyone is born a sinner, which I still don’t get, and that they can’t judge their fellow humans for homosexuality because it’s no more of a sin than being born a human.
The rest of your argument mostly parrots what I said, except at some point, you seemed to get upset and came dangerously close to saying that religious people are bigots. The point I was making was that while we need to keep in mind that Alito is a bigot, we have to also keep in mind that not all members of his book club are bigots.
Some religious people are bigots, certainly not all though. And you don’t need to be religious to have a bigoted viewpoint. But bigotry is exactly my point, I was not trying to tip toe around it. Saying the belief is religious doesn’t make it right, and it’s still bigotry. Just as in the same way people who used religion to discriminate on the basis of race (and some still do) were bigots too.
If someone who was Christian was in a case suing because they believed they were fired for their religion, and a potential juror said they thought Christians were evil, they’d be off that jury in a second without anyone batting an eye. And I’d agree they absolutely should not be on that jury. In none of these cases should jurors who hold bigoted beliefs about the issue at hand be allowed on a jury.
Agreed. I’m glad we’re both bigoted against bigots.