Supreme Court Rules on Sex Discrimination. “But Gorsuch” Hardest Hit.
Let the dunking begin. Werq!
Note: This article includes drag queen themes and graphic images.
The Supreme Court ruling to protect Americans from being fired for their sexuality is the latest betrayal that degrades family, community, industrial bases, and nations!!
That lede might seem a bit dramatic—nay, flamboyant!—to you. But the people of Appalachia put Donald Trump in office precisely because their lives could not improve unless queers and transgenders could be fired willy-nilly by their employers.
The expert on such matters—America’s own hillbilly-whisperer-cum-Hollywood-producer, J.D. Vance—said as much following Monday's ruling. And while Vance’s warning about the end of nations may have been a rococo response to the Supreme Court decision holding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition on sex discrimination in employment also banned employee termination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, he was joined by a parade of conservatives for whom BUT GORSUCH has gone from a Trumpist clarion call to an incubus that haunts their dreams.
If you’ll allow me a brief respite from the schadenfreude, here follows an interlude on the merits of the matter at hand.
I am not a lawyer and I won’t play one on TheBulwarkDOTCOM. However I’m certain that there are legitimate and wonky complaints that good-faith constitutional scholars such as Ted Cruz . . .
Sorry. Such as Josh Hawley . . .
Look, I’m sure there are some good faith constitutional scholars out there who have genuine objections to Monday’s ruling and the legal implications therein. So let’s assume that a good-faith objection can be made.
What we do not have to assume is that a lot of the “constitutional scholars” presently huffing and puffing had zero interest in legal theory. They had an outcome they wanted and they just want someone who is willing to vote with the team and justify it in whatever means necessary.
And another thing we do not have to assume is that Monday’s landmark ruling of Bostock v. Clayton County will bring long-overdue protection to the workplace. Because while many people seemed surprised that the risk of job loss over sexuality is still something to be concerned about in the Year of Our Lord 2020, I’m here to report that outside the big city pockets of fabulousness along the coasts, there are many gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans who have lost jobs, been forced to hide their sexuality or gender identity, or been discriminated against in their places of employment. I have heard their stories and been called to their aid.
I once called a gay friend-of-a-friend—you may have heard about our mafia—who runs a company so I could ask him to interview a person who needed a job because he had been fired for being gay. He told me something to the effect of: “If I hired every gay who had been cast out of their job we wouldn’t have room for anyone else in the company.”
So for those who think this was just virtue signaling from the bench, or that gays are not treated differently from their straight counterparts, I’d like to disabuse you of that notion.
Many, many people worked very hard to make Bostock a reality for decades. I salute them and am indebted to their effort.
Because, thanks to the hard-earned toil of those great Americans, I get to dunk on the integralists like 1990-era Shaq terrorizing the SEC.
Wait . . . let me try that again.
Because thanks to the hard-earned toil of those great Americans, I get to shablam on the Ahmarists like a lip-sync assassin.
Sorry Not Sorry.
It is settled science that we live in the worst possible timeline.
And yet, on Monday the very people who have been triggered by drag-queen story hour had their illiberal fantasies dashed—crucified?—by a conservative man in a dress. Even in this vale of tears, life does sometimes deliver us small joys.
Consider Sohrab Ahmari, the former Muslim, turned atheist, turned socialist, turned free marketeer, turned passionate advocate for classical liberalism.
This year Ahmari is crusading for a Catholic theocratic junta. And so, having previously celebrated the great and good Supreme Court appointments of Donald Trump, he surveyed the Bostock ruling, declared it “disordered and bizarre,” and announced that it was proof that “originalism has failed.”
In a series of tweets later that afternoon, Ahmari said that this ruling was the moment to leave classical liberalism behind once and for all in favor of ordered liberty that upholds traditional values. (That same afternoon the newspaper whose opinion section Ahmari edits tweeted a picture of Central Park that included two visible male erections. State-managed ordered liberty is a great idea—just so long as it doesn’t interfere with you drawing a paycheck.)
Ahmari wasn’t the only keyboard warrior in Operation Rolling Thunderfuck. Another of them, Josh Hammer, wrote a piece for the New York Post titled: “Neil Gorsuch slapped conservatives by creating new gay rights.” (It is of note that the same headline could’ve been written by Towleroad, though they probably would’ve added some additional color to “slapped.”)
Hammer goes on to describe as “harrowing” the threat to conservatism that comes from gays being extended the right to not be fired for being gay. (Not mentioned as harrowing: being fired for being gay.)
Hammer specifically cites the outrage that Catholic schools can no longer fire teachers “whose sexual lifestyle blatantly flouts millennia of Catholic moral teaching.” Set aside the fact that the Court’s Monday ruling does not settle the relevant religious-liberty questions. What’s striking is Hammer’s concern about Catholic schools being allowed to keep firing gays, which seems to make up the preponderance of the schools’ firings—you don’t seem to hear nearly so much about Catholic schools firing straight teachers for living in sin with their significant others, or for divorce or masturbating or various other violations of Catholic doctrine.
But the hissy fit didn’t just happen over at the New York Post.
At the Conservative Review, Daniel Horowitz sent several tweets decrying the "right to transgenderism," declared that the GOP is now the “Transgender Party” (if only!), and suggested that this is just one step on the path to rape victims being sent to reeducation camps for complaining about being sodomized in a woman’s bathroom by a cross-dresser.
At the Daily Wire, Michael Knowles said that Gorsuch redefined “the most fundamental aspect of our nature” and proffered that most conservatives prefer to be cucked than to do something to upset the status quo. (Nothing upsets the status quo more than giving a pink slip to the privileged homos.) Though, to be fair, Knowles concluded that this decision might make Gorsuch an accelerationist, a term that has gained recent favor on the far right, describing (favorably) events that will hasten a race war and lead to a white ethnostate.
The Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino declared that the Bostock decision was an “imposter parading as originalism” and an “ominous sign for anyone concerned about the future of representative democracy.”
Over at Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton declared Bostock “an attack on our republican form of government.”
Degrading nations. Causing the advancement of the white ethnostate. Putting the very existence of representative democracy at threat. Well, that’s just another Monday for the gays.
For Neil Gorsuch on the other hand, this is new territory.
Unfortunately for the mild-mannered Coloradan, he has found himself in the crosshairs of the ultimate marginalized group: the zealots who sold their soul to a Bad Orange Man and no longer like what they got in the deal. The only question is whether the end of BUT GORSUCH is enough to make them finally sashay away from their heathen president.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of the plaintiff.