Equal Protection
Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.
Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.
Mr. Stern’s headline sums it up very well. If you don’t believe it can really be that bad, read the PDF.
It is that bad. Ignorance is one thing, but open hostility like this cannot stand and anyone who supports this bill commits the intellectual equivalent of burning the original Constitution to a pile of ashes.
Let me translate that from fiery liberal anger into constitutional principles:
A law allowing the detrimental differential treatment of a class of persons traditionally subject to invidious discrimination because they belong to that class violates the Equal Protection rights granted by the Constitution as to the federal government in the 5th Amendment and extended as to the States by the 14th Amendment.
Let us quote the Good Document itself:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Gotta love that 14th Amendment. There’s nothing ambiguous in the juxtaposition of the Kansas bill and the Constitution. You can’t deny someone equal protection of the laws. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed in your hotel because I’m a man. Maybe if it’s a country club. But not a hotel. Or a restaurant. Or a state.
The use of freedom of religion as a pathetic attempt to hide animosity and hatred is a supreme act of collective cowardice by the Kansan legislators who vote for this bill.
It is an un-American as it gets. But the good news is, as one ruling after another makes ever-more-clear, you can’t stop history.