A Good Rule of Law: Mind Your Own Business
Yesterdays U.S. Supreme Court decision was a great victory for LGBT rights. But it also was a great victory for something that rests right at the heart of the human experience, the paramount legal doctrine of M.Y.O.B.
Mind Your Own Business.
Reporters love to generate controversy. In a TV interview yesterday, a reporter asked me, What do you have to say to all of the millions of opponents of gay marriage?
I replied thusly: Mind your own business.
OK, Ill admit that that response will not earn me the Nobel Peace Prize. But Im making an important point here. What difference does it make to Person X if Person Y marries Person Z? Seriously.
I sometimes give a speech where I go through a mock agenda for a Tea Party conference. One of the items on the agenda, from 2 pm to 3 pm, is a colloquium on How Gay Marriage Destroyed My Straight Marriage, moderated by No One. And attended by No One.
(Now that I think about it, most Tea Partiers who might attend that colloquium wouldnt know what a colloquium is. And for sure, they couldnt spell it. Or as they would write, spel it.)
Lets face it: whenever anyone sticks his nose into other peoples business, something bad happens. The war in Iraq. The NSA spying on everyone because I-dont-know-why. Chinese cyberattacks. Even the Patriots stealing opponents signals. Hey, everyone, just mind your own business!
One of the basic functions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which we just saw in spades, is to prevent a prejudiced majority from employing the law as a device to stick their noses into the business of discrete, insular minorities. That phrase comes from the most famous footnote in U.S. Supreme Court history, footnote 4 of the decision United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938). Heres the good part:
(P)rejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry
.
(Congratulations, you just passed the bar exam. Now good luck finding a job.)
In Carolene terms, the LGBT community is a discrete, insular minority. Prejudice against gays means that they cannot rely exclusively on political processes to protect them from prejudice and inequality. Therefore, in yesterdays decision, after a searching judicial inquiry, the U.S. Supreme Court did so. Q.E.D.
So yesterdays decision was not merely a victory for our LGBT friends. It was a quantum leap forward in how we see each other with a very healthy respect. We mind our own business.
Or, as Pope Francis put it, Who am I to judge? A very good question, for all of us.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
It doesnt matter much to me.
- The Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever. (1968).
SusanCalvin
(6,592 posts)The swipe at Tea Partiers' intelligence (for his own dignity, not because I don't agree - it's not essential to his point), but I sure agree in essence.
demosincebirth
(12,543 posts)SusanCalvin
(6,592 posts)I have found I sleep better if I treat even people who don't deserve it respectfully.
And it saves time and heartburn on my part.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)This is even in scripture, taught at the church I attended. There was no contention about what the state could do so long as it was a secular matter. Also, laws protecting the vulnerable superceded religious cults and dogma. People KNOW what is right and wrong - it's called empathy and live and let live. Like the Golden Rule.
'Separation of church and state' was paramount, but also, not objecting to prayer being taken out of school. We didn't want a state sponsored religion and religion was a private thing not discussed in public, either.
This spending all of one's time judging others was also taught to be wrong. This is a luxury and a form of being bored and spoilt, with nothing better to do. People should apply their energy to useful endeavors, this vicarious bull is a disservice to all people.
We have so many social and environmental things that need to be addressed - these self righteous ones are not doing their job on Earth. And all this fuss about gays, women, POC, etc. is the hobby of gossips.
SusanCalvin
(6,592 posts)Was brought up on MYOB, and "how would you like it if somebody did that to you?"
Indydem
(2,642 posts)The Democratic Party only holdS this belief on this one aspect: the bedroom.
Not:
How many guns you have, what kinds, and how you use then. MYOB.
How many spouses you have and whether or not you are living with many wives. MYOB.
How much money you have / make and how you use it and / or donate it politically. MYOB.
Which Sky Daddy stories you tell your children. MYOB.
What kind of car you drive and how much fuel it uses and / or how much carbon your house is responsible for. MYOB.
What you eat, what your weight is, and whether or not you have health insurance. MYOB.
Let me be clear: some of these things are important to our society, but to now act as if liberals and progressives ACTUALLY want a MYOB society is ludicrous. We actually have a President who advocates a "brother's keeper" policy; the polar opposite of MYOB.
MYOB is, at it's heart, Libertarianism. "I've got mine, now leave me the fuck alone."
catbyte
(34,451 posts)whereas unfettered access to guns, unlimited dirty money in politics, or injecting religion into public policy is. I don't see the conflict.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)Conservatives claim that what happens in the bedroom degrades the moral foundation of our nation.
Liberals claim that unlimited "dirty" money in politics degrades the political foundation of our nation.
SCOTUS says fuck you to both of those ideas.
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)It was because they were minorities in societies where the majority did not "mind its own business." They were not permitted to live their lives in the manner that their conscience dictated.
Now they want this nation to dictate to minorities how they must live their lives; not according to their own moral compasses, but in accordance with the dictate of the majority. They are trying to turn our social fabric into a copy of that from which our founders fled.
And they are so blinded by their sense of moral superiority that they cannot even see that.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To be treated as an adult with the full autonomy that women are entitled to by virtue of being human beings....and to be treated equal to the men, some of whom will not like it a bit when they lose their Male Privilege and Patriarchy religious cult.