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Subscribe to RSSThe U.S. Supreme Court term that begins Monday promises to be one of the most important for civil rights in decades, with the potential for blockbuster decisions on issues from race in classrooms and the voting booth to legal recognition for same-sex marriage.
Related: Conservatives warily ponder prospect of an 'Obama court'
Less than a decade after ruling that the nation's colleges and universities can consider the race of student applicants to achieve more racially diverse campuses, a practice now widely used by the nation's selective schools, the court has agreed to take a fresh look.
The new challenge comes from Abigail Fisher, a white student denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin. The school admits the top 10 percent of academic performers from all Texas high schools, then considers the race of applicants as one factor in admitting the remainder of an incoming freshman class.
Evan Vucci / AP
People who waited in line overnight to hear the Supreme Court on a landmark case on health care hold their belongings as they make their way into the court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012.
Fisher did not finish in the top 10 percent at her high school and claims that the consideration of race in reviewing applications cost her a spot at the university.
"There were people in my class with lower grades, who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were accepted into UT. And the only difference between us was the color of our skin," she said.
The university, backed by civil rights groups, contends that while the top 10 percent plan achieves some campus diversity, many of its classes would have only a few, if any, black and Hispanic students without additional considerations of race.
Making it harder to achieve the diversity colleges need, argues Gregory Garre, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing the University of Texas, "would jeopardize the nation's paramount interest in educating its future leaders in an environment that best prepares them for the society and workforce they will encounter."
The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin joins Morning Joe to discuss President Obama's relationship with the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and his ruling on the Affordable Care Act, and the relationships the justices have with one another.
The Supreme Court that will hear the case Oct. 10 is different from the one that upheld a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Michigan law school in 2003.
"Sandra Day O'Connor was on the court then, and she's been replaced by Samuel Alito, who has much less tolerance for affirmative action," says Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court cases.
O'Connor, who wrote the decision in the Michigan case, retired from the court in 2006.
As a result, says Pamela Harris, a former Obama administration official in the Justice Department, "I don't think anyone thinks affirmative action is long for this world."
Justice Elena Kagan, considered one of the court's liberals, will sit this one out. She was the Obama administration's solicitor general when the Justice Department became involved in the case in the lower courts.
The Supreme Court will take up another racially charged issue this term if, as seems likely, it agrees to consider efforts to scale back the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to election procedures -- from redrawing congressional district boundaries to changing the locations of polling places.
Three years ago, the Supreme Court brushed off a challenge to that requirement but strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms.
"Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare."
Pending cases ask the court to strike down the pre-clearance requirement entirely or throw out the list of areas, consisting of nine entire states, and of 12 cities and 57 counties elsewhere, that must get permission to modify their election procedures.
The current map, says Bert Rein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing Shelby County, Ala., includes some localities that have made substantial reforms while missing other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls.
As a result, Rein says, the system is unfair. "Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all."
But Debo Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern.
"Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the 50 states. But it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," he says.
The court is almost certain to take up a host of challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
It defines marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." As a result, same-sex couples who get married in the states where such marriages are legal are accorded state and local benefits but miss out on more than 1,100 federal ones.
After at first defending the law, the Obama administration notified federal courts early last year that it concluded the law was unconstitutional. House Republicans then took up the law's defense.
A Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA as discriminatory would not force states to permit same-sex marriage. But it would require the federal government to recognize those marriages where they are legal.
The court could address the issue of same-sex marriage more directly if it takes up the legal challenge to California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.
Legal experts differ on whether the court is prepared to go that far, rather than deciding the DOMA issue now and coming back to the constitutionality of gay marriage in a later term.
"We're not at the point where the Supreme Court will require the state of Mississippi to allow same-sex marriage," says Louis Michael Seidman of the Georgetown University Law Center.
Among other questions the justices will confront:
- Must police get a search warrant before taking a blood sample from a suspected drunk driver?
- How far can police go in using drug-sniffing dogs outside someone's house?
- Can a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, be used to bring lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law that occur in other countries?
- And, in an issue of growing interest to U.S. businesses, should more limits be placed on the ability to bring class-action lawsuits?
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Politics are entirely irrelevant. Banks control whoever is the president. The us govt are just employees of whoever pays em the most (banks,oil,etc), so there is zero difference between the two parties, its just head games to keep us arguin with each other instead of working together to fix this problem. And by problem, I mean the us govt. Its a system set up to purposely not get anything done while sucking the citizens dry of finances and resources.
Lets begin by desegregating
Oh, I'm sorry, nobody wants to go there!
There is not a lot of hope for well reasoned decisions from the Court after Citizens United and the intellectually corrupt decision on the Arizona immigration statute [arguably correct result but based upon weak or false constitutional reasoning]. The white student challenging UT admissions refuses to acknowledge that the 10% automatic admission ALREADY privileges her because of race. The huge funding disparities in Texas assure that a disproportionate number of those automatically admitted to UT will be white.
In addition to that race based privilege, Fisher would deny the University the option of considering diversity as a goal as one among many criteria for determining a student body that meets the mission of the school to prepare graduates for leadership in society. The highly individualistic and totally self centered attitude of Fisher is consistent with a false notion of "meritocracy." It is an entitlement viewpoint that because Fisher is white and from a sociology-economic group that enabled her to participate in a variety of extra-curricular clubs, she is entitled to admission. It is like Mitt Romney saying that anyone could join his club, as long as you make over $5 million a year - because how much money you make is the criteria for admission in his view. The admissions staff at UT believes that a broader set of criteria that includes race as one among many factors better reflects society and who should be admitted. This is really not about affirmative action to correct past discrimination. This is a false argument that if the system is currently out of balance because of present racial factors, it is impermissible to adjust the current operation of the system to try to correct that current fault.
Diversity-What about sports teams? Do'not we have great diversity there already?? Are black athletes over-represented on the ball fields in America??
Underground:
I fail to see any problem with that particular Supreme Court Ruling. Why should Unions, Interest groups, and even foreign institutions have the ability to contribute campaign money by the shipload to advance thier interests in our government while the companies that employ thier members are prohibited? Does it make any sense at all to allow everybody in sight to contribute money to political campaigns except those who produce something, and make a profit? The Supreme Court was absolutely correct in thier ruling, and our "Spender & Thief" only showed his lack of class (yet again) by publicly criticizing them about it in a public forum in which he KNEW they could not respond.
She had BETTER GRADES, and MORE ACCOMPLISHMENTS than candidates who were accepted. Only in an alternate universe would this be considered right.
Obama administration knew 24 hours after the attack on our Ambassader that it was a TERROR attack....why the cover up?
Why did the media & Obama & Susan Rice lie to the American ppl for a sold week & why is the MSM still covering his ass?
Love:
Because they all want to help him get re-elected.
There is no proof that it was pre-planned. The investigation is still ongoing as to whether it was pre-planned, opportunistic and whether or not Al-Qaeda was involved.
Unless you are saying that brain size varies based on race and we need to compensate for that you are deluded. There is no reason a schools admissions hould be based on anything but merit and achievement based on grades not the color of your skin. I grew up poor and white (yes not everyone that is poor is a minority) I busted my butt in school graduated at the top of my class to get to college and find out it didnt matter, it didnt matter my fmily could barely feed themselves let alone help me pay for school that my father was disabled an in a nursing home, it didnt matter I was the first in my family to go to college and it didnt matter I graduated at the top of my class because financial aid scholarships at my school were so weighted on race. I watched my class mates who got to live at home never struggling one day with their new cars and phones and with less achievements, less financial need and lower grades than me but they would get full ride scholarships while I had to work nights to support myself. So knock it off with the it's whats fair BS. If it is based on anything to do with the color of your skin it is not fair it is RACIST even if the race benefitting is not white.
OH and further more most schools use the race factor because they have to or they will get sued byt the kids who didnt earnt their admission like the rest of us, its has nothing to do with making it more balanced liek society because once you get in the real world you have to work to earn things
The democraps want obamma to appoint supreme court justices. Obamma the one that surrendered his license to practice law as was his wife before an investigation that would have led to disbarment in Illinios.
Look what this idiot has done to thie country, besides making us the laughing stock of the world. High unemployment, trillions of dollars spent on BS "Green" projects. Taxes that are going up due to obamma care (read the bill people), medical costs that have already gone up and not down liked promised.
BTW obamma is not an african american unless he was born in africa. He is not even black he is milado (1/2 white and 1/2 black).
Obamma did not inherite the problems of the country in 2008 - he asked to take them over when he decided to run for president. He just made thema whole lot worse
Hockey,
Puck you.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
Can't stand a dose of reality I see can you MSNBCMFE
What's with the extra "m" in "Obama?"
The Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission (www.iardc.org) lists President Obama's registration status as "voluntarily retired." It lists Michelle Obama's status as "voluntarily inactive."
It is not true that either of them surrendered their law license to avoid disciplinary action or criminal prosecution, however. Nor is it true, contrary to what has been claimed on literally thousands of anti-Obama blogs and websites, that the Obamas were "disbarred" or had their law licenses "revoked."
Neither the Illinois State Bar Association nor the ARDC lists any accusations of misconduct or disciplinary actions against the Obamas. According to a statement quoted by FactCheck.org, ARDC deputy administrator and chief counsel James Grogan says the Obamas were "never the subject of any public disciplinary proceedings."
Quite to the contrary, a notice on the website of the Illinois State Bar states that the Association is "proud" to have Barack and Michelle Obama as honorary members.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/Obama-Law-License.htm
The Association is proud to have as Honorary Members, President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and author Harper Lee, whose depiction of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird stands as an unparalleled example of legal integrity.
http://www.isba.org/about/history
MSNBC (really)
MUSLIM Sypathizers Nothing But Crooks
When has MSNBC OR ANY News Organization EVER Told the Whole Truth ???
This Country IS Beyond the Civil Rights Laws, this isn't the 60's-70's or 80's ANYMORE !!!
Just Gives the ACLU a REASON to EXIST !!! WE Don't Need it ANYMORE !!!
That's funny. I personally know a number of people who hate blacks, or Hispanics, or Asians, or Spaniards, or gays, etc. We are NOT past the point where the law no longer has to protect minorities.
Until people get it through their heads that each person deserves to be treated based on their individual merits and not whether they are light or dark or share a night stand with another dude, we will continue to need legislative protection.
we will never get to that point until we are all treated the same. Why is woman passed over because of her color?
Styro, in the face of the mountain of "legislative protection" that already exists, why is there still discrimination and bigotry? Because racism is found in individuals and that is where is must be fought. To the individual racist, laws mean absolutely nothing. You can use quotas (that is what they really are) to get minorities into places, but you cannot legislate racism out of an individual. MLK Jr.'s dream requires the participation of all individuals in this country. So based on reality and your idea of protection Affirmative Action should stay around forever and never accomplish its goal.
I don't support AA, but I am a realist and I admit that we will never eliminate descrimination. I'm a Star Trek fan, and even on those old shows and movies you see "racism" against Klingons, Ferengi, etc. At least if we had extraplanetary aliens walking amongst us, then we might be more welcoming toward our fellow humans from this planet.
Dreams of my father were to work as a milkman so we could have some shoes and food. He was very privilaged.
DOMA is unconstitutionsl under
Section 2
1: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States
This should apply to in state tuition as well
How is that South African change going? All the problems solved by handing over the government?
I'm not in favor of losing thousands of years of progress to make life easier for anyone.
"As a result, same-sex couples who get married in the states where such marriages are legal are accorded state and local benefits but miss out on more than 1,100 federal ones. "
don't care about the same sex marriage but was freaked out that there are 1100 federal benefits for being married. WTF??
And thus a clear equal protection violation when those rights and benefits are granted to some marriages but denied to others.
...Federal employees get paid way more than most private-sector employees doing the same work. They get way better benefits too. Yet they are always snivelling.
SIX WEEKS PAID VACATION and THIRTEEN SICK DAYS PAID every year!!!
I get two weeks vacation and 3 days sick leave, and work for HALF what my government counterparts make.
48 days off vs 13 days off and I make half of what they make.
Aww jealous? Maybe you should be mad at your employer who's making profits off of the hard work he steals from you and doesn't compensate you for it.
You should join a Union.
Look I grew up in the hills of Kentucky. Schools were not that great, an we were poor ( really poor ). Now I live on the beach in Delaware. My wife drives an X5. We do ok. No one gave me anything. My point is if a dum o' hillbilly can do it, anyone can. But if we are going to have to meet racial quotas then lets meet them. For the first time White babies were not the majority this year. So lets have those special %s, but not just in schools or Jobs. Lets do it for the NBA as well.....lol....
if the fat lady sings ,hopefully she falls on obumba and smothers him.
community organizer that is one hell of an acomplishment.
What did the dem congress and house pass in the 1st 2 yrs of our lords rein.
Did anyone notice that list at the end of the article. Change is on the way and it isn't going to be what you all want.
Little by little, it looks like the concept of "affirmative action" is slowly on it's way out.
Remember school busing to achieve a racial balance?? Insulting to minority children to imply that the only way they can learn something is to sandwich them between two white kids every day.
Hiring and/or promoting on the basis of race is clearly racist against white people.
Caucasian is a race isn't it?? Time for the Supreme Court to act in a fair and responsible manner, and correct these injustices once and for all.
The really important distinction here is that there is only one race, the human race. MLK Jr. knew that, so should everyone else.
Beverly in chicago is a racist and doesn't even know it. Or, worse yet she enjoys it.
I am FED up with this stupidity. These idiots make statements so full of CRAP it is amazing. To educate the "future" leaders does NOT MEAN they have to make sure there are equal or unequal NUMBERS of BLACKS, WHITES, or HISPANICS.
The BEST, the SMARTEST, the FASTEST, the STRONGEST, and NOT ACCORDING to RACE are to be REWARDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO matter what their skin color.
IF all blacks, or all whites, or all ASIANS are the smartest, fastest, whatever THEN DO NOT SUBSTITUTE SLOW and STUPID people into their place under the IDIOCY of "RACIAL QUOTAS". Anyone that keeps us this STUPIDITY is the RACIST BIGOT that wants to ENFORCE the WORST over the BEST!
Affirmative Action on its way out? Hurray. I have met way too many incompetent people who have gotten to where they were only through Affirmative Action. Good Riddance.
Colorado has the Implied Consent law that you need to understand before you get a license. It essentially says the cops can get blood because you consented when you got the license. Same thing in other states and countries (Germany at least).
If they can kill the federal DOMA, I will cheer, DOMA is an abomination of the ultra right Christians intended to be the leading edge of the Christianification of America.
Does ANYONE believe the Supreme Court will find these voter Id laws illegal? They are as partisan as the WI Supreme Court is. (They are being paid for by the gnop)
I hope SCOTUS will uphold voter id laws. You need ID to do so many unimportant things in this country, why not for the important stuff?
WE now have a country where the LAZY and STUPID outnumber the DILIGENT and INTELLECTUAL, so we have Obama in the White House. WHY? Beacause IDIOTS and FREELOADERS outnumber the rest of the even common sense folks. Thanks to AFFIRMITIVE ACTION STUPIDITY.
One man or one woman having 10 to 15 BASTARD children raised on welfare and living off the system subsidized by the government STEALING from the PRODUCTIVE to create MORE UNPRODUCTIVE.
Exactly right, If you dont pay taxes your voting right should be terminated since you dont contribute to society. Just tax the millionares and billionares more money because they are sucessfull and worked to get where they are at. when the top 10% pay 71 % of all taxes and the bottom 46% pay 0 income taxes. People say its not far to middle class because the rich dont pay their fair share in taxes. How about the bums that dont pay anything, wheres their fair share at? let them pay taxes too and see how fast our debt decreases
There should be no program that allows consideration due to skin color for any reason.
Five right-wing nuts on this court swear up and down that the constitution has nothing to say about a guarantee of civil rights. I don't understand why moderate people would even appear before such a biased group. They always lose.
There is no right to privacy (the basis for Roe v. Wade) in there either.
Psycobabble. Plain and simple. Five right wing Justices? Who? Certainly not Roberts.
The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people."
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html
Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the trimester of pregnancy.
The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability. The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."
wow that let the less qualified minorities into the college over more qualified higher gpa more student activity white person in. I might sound racist on that or maybe thats just racist what they are doing. Its alot like going into get an interview where you have the white guy who graduated from harvard with a 4.0 who couldnt get a job because the black man graduated from community college with a 2.5 gpa got it because they were affraid the naacp would come after there business for being racist.
Don't let these libtards here and from NBC fool you in to not voting, that's exactly what they want, everyone to feel the election is over before the votes are even cast.
THIS ELECTION IS NOT OVER!!!
Obama is going to lose this election and we will finally have someone in the White House to not only lead us out of the mess Obama, Reid, Pelosi, etc, have gotten us in to, but someone who will get the USA back to the position of exceptionalism on the world stage.
VOTE ROMNEY NOV 6th
It must frustrate you terribly to realize that the rich white guy is going to lose, and lose big.
Don't be so arrogant, skrekk. You seem to have a problem with people getting wealthy. Instead of your arrogance, put your efforts into something far more useful, like actually contributing towards helping to fix the country's issues.
Really? I'm a rich white guy myself. I'm just not planning on voting for the same clueless nuts who drove the economy into the ditch 4 years ago, the morons who said "let Detroit go bankrupt".
And it looks like most Americans are voting the same way, for the guy who's actually working hard to pull the economy out of that ditch
Hey Spud, it's obvious that you have a serious degenerative mental condition if you think that voting a straight Dumbocrat ticket will fix the country's ailments. $5T in the hole and 8% unemployment proves that. Low intelligence partisan politcal shills like you are one of the reasons this country is in the mess it's in.
Or dentistry for that matter.
It seems that these folks are violating there own rules as far as separating church and state. Marriage has everything to with the bible and nothing to do with laws or states or federal institutions. The rules have already been written. One man, one woman. Anything other than that comes from those folks who state they have separated themselves from this. Seems to me like they are trying to play God. A union between men and men and women and women should never be called a marriage. It has nothing to do with the original plan. The original plan is right out of the bible. What is theres out of? Their @!$%#ing asses thats where their bull@!$%# comes from. Stupid idiots that dont the know bible but yet want to play God. That would be our great federal government in its entirety. Dumb mother @!$%#ers............ All of you............ I believe that God is one pissed off dude at this federal piss of @!$%# they call a government........... Common men of simple stature that are of poor and middle classes could do 100 times better than the current piece of @!$%# they call the federal government. Yep your a big piece of @!$%# alright. Trouncing on American citizen constitutions and acting like just because they setup 9/11 its ok now for the same pieces of @!$%# to now enter into your premises without a warrant of any kind. They can setup surveillance equipment in your premises for absolutely nothing but pure speculation now. Maybe theyd like that done to their homes when their in bed with the misses. You pieces of crap. You all are on Gods list of idiots and you all will go to hell for this. Yep you better get your heaven on down here because you pieces of @!$%# are gonna pay in hell you can count on it. I pray everyday that you will. God loves me by the way. In a way you @!$%#s wont ever get. Just the biggest lying sack of @!$%# government I have ever seen. I'd love to spend 5 minutes in a boxing ring with the pussy George Bush Jr. I'd love it. I really would. Lying sack of @!$%#. Once you were through with your bull@!$%# campaign I never wanted to vote for another sack of @!$%# Corporate pussy politician in my entire life. I have not voted since then and will continue not to vote for these corrupt ass holes. All of them not just some, all.....................................................................Isnt that right Mr. Assange.....
Huh?
Marriage is a government contract. You have to go purchase a license, remember?
Religious marriage is not recognized legally.
Then your God has some serious insecurity issues.
If marriage is a religious institution rather than a legal contract, isn't the denial of same-sex marriage an infringement of the religious freedom of Episcopalians?
Remember, not all religious folks are bigots like you are.
@skrekk
Interesting legal argument. I would say that denying same sex marriage does infringe on their beliefs, because all citizens should receive equal treatment under law as stated in the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause.
That would be precisely the kind of case that should be taken to the Supreme Court.
Hey skrekk, just because someone doesn't agree with gay marriage, that doesn't mean they're a bigot. You're just a partisan political shill, towing the party line because you lack any sort of intelligence to look at the country's problems from all sides. True to your retarded libtard form, you have a degenerative brain condition that prevents you from having any sort of rational thought. Instead, you make childish comments to others, always pointing the finger. You'd be more productive if you'd work on your mental problems so that you'd finally be capable of some sort of advanced thought.
I wonder how many sins our "loving christin" committed in his post? lol.
Marriage is a civil contract between two people. The terms of this contract are governed and defined by the individual states. The contract is necessary to define who gets what upon divorce. No religious ceremony of any kind is necessary in order to be married. If marriage was religious in nature and law, whose definition(s) would we use? Your assertion that marriage is defined in the Bible is totally irrelevant to Hindus for instance, who, by the way, think you are blasphemous for eating beef. I repeat for those blinded by religion, marriage is a civil contract, period.
marriage licenses were only implement in the late 1920's in the US. Were all the previous marriages to that "illegal"?
Marriage is a religious term while civil contracts are exactly that, civil contracts and should be called civil unions or some other secular designation.
Marriage licenses were only called that to keep in step with our religious traditions and for NO OTHER REASON
Sounds like you've confused marriage with holy matrimony.
It also sounds like you think the sharia laws of your cult should be enforced by the government.
SKREKK -- You seem to be the biggest hater of all here. Quite the little Progressive.
Jeff, it sounds like it upsets you that most Americans think your sharia laws belong in your life, not theirs.
skrekk isn't hating on those who are anti-gay marriage, but he is just calling them out as to what they are acting like - BIGOTS
and here's why (before you go and get all upset and call everyone a hater):
1. your opinion is fine, its your opinion, you can have it.. the problem is you are using your opinion to ACTIVELY SUPPRESS the rights of homosexuals to marry the consenting adult who they are in love with who happens to be of the same gender.. that's where you become a bigot, you are supporting to actively suppress their rights, welcome to bigotry.
2. and why aren't gay people bigots ? well, they aren't suppressing the rights of any heterosexuals, heterosexuals can still continue marrying and having the divorce rate over 50% etc, that doesn't change, so they aren't in turn doing to you what you are doing to them.. AND.. homosexuals have had to put up with decades of being suppressed and/or persecuted just because they happen to be homosexuals and you guys justify it with your religious hatred...
so yea Jeff, skrekk isn't a hater, he's fighting for a minority's rights, that does make him progressive
you on the other had, you are a hater and a bigot, so deal with it