Antonin Scalia’s rabid dissent on gay marriage is getting most of the attention, but John Roberts’ dissent is more thoughtful and at the same time more bleak and even foreboding. He claims LGBT couples have “lost forever” with the Supreme Court’s decision:
Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs.
Roberts is arguing for allowing the democratic process rather than the courts to hash this out, and while I disagree with that argument in this case, it’s a legitimate constitutional argument. But he goes to a place — where LGBT couples can NEVER win “true acceptance” — that almost condones, or at least gives comfort to, an unending intolerance.
You may have your new, court-awarded constitutional right, but you will never be truly accepted.
