Civil rights lawyer Dan Canon, contributing to Salon.com, is sorry. And, he’s a little scared.
He’s sorry for writing back in 2016 that marriage “equality’ is safe. And he’s scared of… “nothing”. Which is certainly something because, as he sees it, the Supreme Court doing “nothing” with regard to SB8–Texas’ abortion ban currently before the SC–endangers the “right” for a woman to terminate her pregnancy. He’s so scared, in fact, he felt the need to warn his fellow leftists that SB8 may have ramifications on so-called same-sex marriage.
And he may be on to something; especially if that something is doing… nothing.
Canon’s reasoning goes like this: as SB8 empowers private citizens to use lawsuits to prevent abortions (thus, threatening the overturning of Roe v. Wade), the same tactic may be applied to other issues, like marriage. He certainly has a horse in that race, too; he served as counsel in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision which enabled “same-sex” marriage in all 50 states. He was also the guy who successfully sued county clerk Kim Davis who refused to sign “same-sex” marriage certificates on the grounds that it opposed her religious beliefs.
In his Salon commentary, Canon says that a previous 2016 piece he wrote was an attempt to allay his comrade’s fears that incoming President Donald Trump would undo the twisted knot that is “same-sex” marriage. He guffawed at the time that there would have to be some serious changes in the Supreme Court, and that another “marriage” case would have to make its way to the highest court in the land in order to threaten Obergefell. And like something out of a Hollywood script, he also wrote in 2016, “more terrifying is the idea that a Trump-packed Supreme Court could increasingly allow government officials to opt out of things they find distasteful on religious grounds.”
Well, the first dominoes fell with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, retirement of Anthony Kennedy, and the appointment of three SC justices by former President Trump.
And while “same-sex” marriage is safe (for now), we have now seen SB8 usher in a situation where government officials have backed off (enforcing Roe) while common, pro-life citizens have picked up the mantle by way of litigation. And the effects have been… well… life-saving. In September 2020, 4,313 abortions were performed in Texas. In September 2021, 2,164 abortions. That’s a whopping 49.8% decrease!
For that, the left should be quaking in their shoes.
Quick to disparage anything that does not follow the leftist narrative, Canon openly complains that the federal courts have been the real (invisible?) fly in the ointment. And he now finds himself very unsettled. Admitting that he does “not believe this Supreme Court has the stones to issue an explosive opinion reversing Obergefell, or Brown v. Board of Education, or even Roe” (It’s too politically risky, he says), Canon warns of a fatal flaw he made in his op-ed from five years ago: “I didn’t take into account that the courts could simply do nothing in the face of rabid, uninhibited, GOP dumbf**kery. There’s little risked by doing nothing. Non-action doesn’t grab attention, doesn’t demand a response, doesn’t warrant a backlash. Nothing is powerful.”
And Canon is concerned about GOP push-back at all levels of state governance. For instance, Texas state representative James White recently wrote state Attorney General Ken Paxton whether “Obergefell v. Hodges requires private citizens to recognize homosexual marriages when the law of Texas continues to define marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman.”
Canon, unsurprisingly, calls the letter “nuts… completely unhinged… sovereign-citizen-looney-bin nonsense.” But he is also quick to mention that “there are judges who agree with this twisted view of federalism—the same judges who can be counted on to do nothing when state officials target the LGBTQ+ community.”
You can excuse Canon for viewing the political landscape a bit like a bag of marbles; thus, rendering leftist ideology-as-law as tenuous. Look most recently at what shook down in Virginia where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Last year, Joe Biden won that state by double digits. This year, the tide in Virginia changed dramatically. Next year, one can only wonder if the Democrat party will be able to maintain control of both House and Senate.
Canon closes his piece with doomsday appeal. He doesn’t believe the courts will save him and his fellow leftists. “Your worst nightmares are likely to come true. The principal question we should ask as we live out those nightmares is one that won’t be answered by the courts: How do we wake up?”
Well, you can be sure that the left won’t take this lying down. They won’t do nothing. And that’s something American Christians can bank on.