Nerd Pride Radio

He just gave a speech to the Federalist Society in which he laments that anyone who espouses a view of "traditional" marriage may only safely do so in the privacy of their own home. To speak such things in public risks the speaker being branded as a bigot. Therefore, going forward, it is incumbent upon the supreme court to defend free speech.

This is a sitting supreme court justice fundamentally misrepresenting the first amendment because he doesn't like it when people tell him they don't like his views. This is a sitting supreme court justice equating freedom of speech with freedom from criticism.

Yes. And also- he's a bigot.

Kyle wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:45 am Yes. And also- he's a bigot.

So much so... yes.

Republicans are very good at messaging. So now if you support LGBTQ causes, or god forbid you're a member of the community, then you're a "groomer"- which basically means a pedophile. And while I'll openly call people out for using terms like groomer and tell them it's bigoted and homophobic, most people-- scared of being pedophile-adjacent-- tell themselves, "I really don't want to get involved," and stay quiet. And that's how the republicans start gaining traction on these issues.

So along with being "woke" being a bad word (even though it really means just being accepting and empathetic for people different from you), anyone that supports "cancel culture" is anti-american and anti-first amendment. Alito is pulling this fast one, which he knows is intellectually corrupt and wrong.

But your average, middle of the road centrist-political person hears these things and thinks, "I don't want to be called unpatriotic. I don't want to be called a pedophile. I'll just stay quiet."

It's horeshit. That's why people need to speak out. It's why all of us here, even if you don't have a gay friend or family member, needs to speak out. Needs to go to protests. Needs to go to support LGBTQ causes and to vocally not support bigots who openly display their bigotry. Because otherwise the republican's plans work.

I can't find the speech - all I can find is that he appeared there maybe in October but I don't know what he said exactly? Anyway, the recent uptick in obsession about LGBT people and grooming and all this nonsense is deeply concerning. It really does seem like a tit for tat response to accusations of bigotry that make people uncomfortable. You think I'm a bigot? Yeah well you're a groomer. It seems to be on that level. Except that when you think gay people should be fired from their jobs for being gay, that really is bigotry, and supporting gay people not being fired from their jobs does not make anyone a groomer. In fact the people who are most anxious and agitated about this issue are the people I would be most concerned about doing something creepy.

The reality of religious freedom where I live is that religious organizations can and do fire people for being gay, and there's not a bit of recourse. So I'm not seeing any limits on their real power to exclude LGBT people as they see fit. People just about had a kitten here because they wanted to tell the grade school level kids that gay people existed, and that was definitely classified as creepy grooming among a certain set. I wonder if these people genuinely believe their kids don't know what being gay is by the time they're in mid grade school? Of course they know and if you've let them on the Internet at all they know a lot more than this even if they've got all the parental controls neatly in place. How can this be mysterious? Of course they know. I don't even remember when I learned this but it was definitely in grade school and that was way back when. Yet somehow it's a genuine talking point for a pretty large segment of my civic world, that we can and should protect children from any awareness of this.

Also, recently reported that Alito is the leaker of Wade vs Roe amongst a number of other decisions. And of course Roberts isn't doing anything.

I thought the story was that he or his wife are accused of personally leaking the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case - the one deciding companies don't have to pay for aspects of insurance their owners disagree with for religious reasons. The accusation is that they gave the information to dinner guests who had some relationship to the court via donating to a charity, and the guests then passed it along secondhand to another party who did in fact correctly predict the outcome of the case publicly beforehand, while claiming to have insider info. But later he had a change of heart and decided to tell what happened. All parties involved have denied it, but the husband of the visiting couple is now deceased so we don't know what he would say.

It's a really unfortunate thing no matter who might have been responsible. Respect for the institution demands not leaking. In my job I have access only to low-level information or the private concerns of individuals, nothing major that would affect lots of people, but I feel like it's my duty to be an absolute black box for all such matters. Basic ethics. I do not tell anybody's secrets to anybody, which many people can attest to either because their information was locked away and has never come out, or because it came out later from some other source and they realize that I've been sitting on it for 20 years. That's how we do things; to be honest that's how I was raised from early on. I realize the political stakes are so high for people with the court but really it's about the institution and justice in a broad sense and that's so much more important.