Calling all Queers

Tonight the president will announce his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.  This court is the highest law in the land.  The person who ascends to this bench will be in a position to shape the legal landscape of our country for a generation.  No other governmental body has this kind of unparalleled influence on the lives of of everyday citizens.  We must prepare ourselves to do our level best to ensure the court is not overrun with conservatives who would turn back time and erase the hard-won rights our community is owed.  Depending on who this nominee is, and if he or she wins confirmation, we must be ready to defend ourselves against the possibility of a Rightist takeover in the court.  Let me elaborate:

You all remember Lawrence, right?  That was the decision that struck down the Texas sodomy law.  It was the one that said, once and for all, that gay sex is okay sex.  As men and women (and womyn, and intersex, and MTF, and FTM) of the queer kind we will continue to be uniquely affected by the decisions of the Supreme Court as the fights for marriage and adoption rights burgeon. 

And there’s also Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision that finally completed women’s sovereignty over their own bodies.  Millions of rabid conservatives are foaming at the mouth in anticipation of this nominee.  The Christian Right has been organizing for this moment for thirty years.  They’ve been winning smaller battles in the interim, at the state level, instituting parental consent laws and the partial-birth ban.  As a man I don’t think about abortion all that much.  Doubly so as a gay man.  But I am convinced the government has no expertise in the debate about the start and end of life. 

So!  Brothers and sisters and everyone else!  Lift up your heads and be prepared to do all you can to defend your liberty.