This article highlights the marked differences between the U.S. Supreme Court’s views on gay rights versus those of women. In a speech last week, Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke explicitly about the court’s double standard:
In its gay rights rulings, she told a law school audience last week, the court uses the soaring language of “equal dignity” and has endorsed the fundamental values of “liberty and equality.” Indeed, a court that just three decades ago allowed criminal prosecutions for gay sex now speaks with sympathy for gay families and seems on the cusp of embracing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
But in cases involving gender, she said, the court has never fully embraced “the ability of women to decide for themselves what their destiny will be.” She said the court’s five-justice conservative majority, all men, did not understand the challenges women face in achieving authentic equality.
And, according to the article, the court’s swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy is the “most powerful” contributor to this inconsistency. Read the full piece here. The article also includes more about Ginsburg’s career and her account of working with her conservative male colleagues.
broadsspeak 