I used the word “partner” in an attempt to be intentionally vague. But I’ll tell you now that the bride is a cisgender woman. Her husband is a cisgender man. In short, it’s the kind of wedding that conservatives believe is the only kind of wedding that counts.
But there’s a more complex aspect to their nuptials. She is bisexual and proudly so. It just so happens that she fell in love with a man. She has had many relationships with women. Had she fallen in love with a woman, it’s quite possible that the seamstress could have refused to alter her dress, the bakery could have refused to make her a cake. But she avoided all of that by marrying a man.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been very busy lately making clear which kinds of people it truly values. By striking down Roe v. Wade, the justices showed us how much they value the opinions of women who want a say in their own health care. By striking down affirmative action, they showed us how much they value White over Black and Brown students. By striking down student loan forgiveness, they demonstrated how much they value those who don’t have enough money to avoid the Ponzi scheme called student loans. And today they essentially legalized the unequal treatment of LGBTQ people by holding that discrimination is a small price to pay if it lifts up just one kind of love.
This Supreme Court has become a conservative dreamland: Out of touch with the country and determined to satisfy conservatives who think they win only when someone else loses.
Lorie Smith, the Colorado web designer who refuses to make websites for LGBTQ people, may experience a boom in her business. This legal action was the best thing she could have done to make that happen. I don’t know if she’s a particularly good web designer or not, but I do know she will be lionized in some circles because she helped make people who conservatives don’t like suffer.
This need by conservatives is not about faith, really. It’s about ensuring that Americans they don’t know and don’t like will suffer. They consider it a win for White people when Black and Brown people suffer. A win for men when women suffer. A win for older, richer people when younger, poorer people suffer. Everything in their minds is binary. We win. You lose. Black and white. And our current Supreme Court has become the favored weapon in their arsenal to bring about heartache for those they don’t like.
And it won’t end here. Because whatever lines the justices may think they have carefully drawn during this term, their benefactors in the deep conservative world are just getting warmed up. Get ready for more: More behavior on your part that they will essentially outlaw. More things we’re not allowed to teach. More roads for access unceremoniously cut off. More rights trampled on, and more barriers to discrimination lowered. Because the main priority of our conservative Supreme Court is to keep the status quo secure. Solid. And that means keeping certain people down.
So, I will go to my friend’s wedding in a few hours. And I will smile and have a good time, and I will be happy for her. There will be other LGBTQ friends of hers in attendance, and none of us would dream of sullying her day by reminding her that she’s unintentionally made a choice that now, thanks to six people in Washington, places her above us in the American hierarchy of who matters most.
She was never put in a position to have her right to the pursuit of happiness questioned.
