To the Editor:
Re “‘Equal Dignity’: 5-4 Ruling Makes Same-Sex Marriage a Right Nationwide” (front page, June 27):
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s dissent asks of his colleagues, “Just who do we think we are?”
As someone directly affected by the marriage ruling, I would like to tell the chief justice who I am. I am a 64-year-old American. I am a seminary graduate and law school dean of students. I am a taxpayer and a voter. I am the husband of the man I met and fell in love with 42 years ago.
I am a believer in America’s promise and ideals. I am one of the countless gay and lesbian Americans who have waited in hope that one day our country would recognize the simple fact that we are deserving of equality under the law.
That’s who I am, Chief Justice Roberts. Who are you?
Philadelphia
Note from KBJ: How do you get to be a law-school professor, much less a dean, when you can't even read? Here is what Chief Justice Roberts said, in context:
The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of injustice.” Ante, at 11, 23. As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are? (boldface added)
Shorter Roberts: "We, the justices of the Supreme Court, are unelected and unaccountable to the people. Who do we think we are, legislators?" Gary Clinton is a homosexual first and a law professor second.
