After Scrapping Abortion Rights, SCOTUS Could Target Gay Rights, Gay Marriages

After Scrapping Abortion Rights, SCOTUS Could Target Gay Rights, Gay Marriages
Image: Justice Clarence Thomas

The US Supreme Court last week in a 6-3 decision struck down abortion rights and there are fears that the conservative judges might now go after other rulings, including gay marriages. The chilling warning was contained in the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which set aside the 50-year-old precedent set by Roe v Wade. 

Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the judges (Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were the others) who scrapped abortion rights in the US, had this to say on page 119: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Griswold v Connecticut is the Supreme Court case that ruled married couples have the right to obtain contraceptives, Lawerence v. Texas decriminalised homsexuality in the US when it upheld the right to engage in private sexual acts and  Obergefell v. Hodges legalised same-sex marriages. 

LGBTQI Rights Are The New Target

“On the first day of Pride weekend in many major cities, and on the eve of Sunday’s 7-year anniversary of the Obergefell ruling, Thomas has made it clear that LGBTQ rights are the Supreme Court’s next target,” LGBTQI media advocacy organisation GLAAD said in a statement

“The message here is clear and distressing: Americans are losing protected access to abortion, a constitutional right they have valued for nearly fifty years, and other rights to personal liberty are at risk too,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said on Twitter. 

“Thomas’s dissent is a blaring red alert for the LGBTQ community and for all Americans. We will never go back to the dark days of being shut out of hospital rooms, left off of death certificates, refused spousal benefits, or any of the other humiliations that took place in the years before Obergefell. And we definitely will not go back to the pre-Lawrence days of being criminalized just because we are LGBTQ. But that’s exactly what Thomas is threatening to do to the country,” said GLAAD CEO. 

Endangers Other Fundamental Rights In The US

According to Lambda Legal, the SCOTUS ruling endangers all fundamental rights. “In addition to posing an existential threat to everyone who can become pregnant, this ruling puts at risk all the liberty and autonomy rights secured by decades of case law both before and after Roe v. Wade,” said Jennifer Pizer, Acting Chief Legal Officer, Lambda Legal,

“These bedrock rights of freedom and equality have been critical to the rights to privacy about other medical decisions, the freedom to use birth control, of interracial couples to marry, and transgender rights, as well as to Lambda Legal’s victories in Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down laws criminalizing same-sex relationships) and Obergefell v. Hodges (which made marriage equality the law of the land).”



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