Posted on 07/06/2015 7:29:31 PM PDT by markomalley
A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO “DIGNITY”: Jonathan Turley has an intriguing oped in the Washington Post, discussing why Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, may portend a much broader and more nefarious right to “dignity”:
In reality, he has been building to this moment for years, culminating in what might now be called a right to dignity. In his 1992 Casey decision, he upheldRoe v. Wade on the basis of “personal dignity and autonomy [that] are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Kennedy wove this concept of protected dignity through a series of cases, from gay rights to prison lawsuits, including his historic 2003 Lawrence decision striking down the criminalization of homosexuality. These rulings on liberty peaked withObergefell, which he described as an effort of the petitioners to secure “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.” He used the word “dignity” almost a dozen times in his decision and laid down a jurisprudential haymaker: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.” . . .
Dignity is a rather elusive and malleable concept compared with more concrete qualities such as race and sex. Which relationships are sufficiently dignified to warrant protection? What about couples who do not wish to marry but cohabitate? What about polyamorous families, who are less accepted by public opinion but are perhaps no less exemplary when it comes to, in Kennedy’s words on marriage, “the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family”? The justice does not specify.
Nor could they specify, even if they wanted to (which they don’t). The progressives have long dreamed of constitutionalizing a right to “dignity,” precisely because it’s so amorphous. In many ways, Turley’s piece echoes a longer recent piece by Jeffrey Rosen in the Atlantic explaining the vast, subjective possibilities it offers for progressive judges and its dangerous incompatibility with the First Amendment:
I won’t rehearse here the objections to reading the text and history of the Constitution at such a high level of generality; with this approach, the connections to the specific concerns that animated the framers is hard to discern. Suffice it to say that Justice Louis Brandeis, the greatest defender of the right to privacy in U.S. history, originally tried to persuade courts to recognize a new right to dignity, after confessing that American law, unlike Roman and European law, had not, traditionally protected offenses against honor and dignity.
But, as Neal Richards demonstrates in Intellectual Privacy, Brandeis changed his mind about the wisdom of constitutionalizing a right to dignity—defined as the right to restrain the press from publishing truthful but embarrassing information about celebrities—after concluding that it clashed with the First Amendment guarantees of free press and free expression. Instead, Brandeis came to embrace a more carefully defined notion of intellectual privacy and freedom of thought and belief, more closely rooted in the text of the First Amendment itself.
In the ultimate irony, the progressives so excited by a right to dignity are the ones have intellectually led the charge against recognition of economic liberties, such as the right to contract, exemplified in cases such as Lochner v. New York (1905), on grounds that they are too subjective. There is far more substance and historical/founding era support for a right to contract than a right to dignity, but of course we all know the progressives don’t care about being consistent or original meaning; it’s only the ends that matter.
IV
Perhaps recognizing that these cases do not actually involve liberty as it has been understood, the majority goes to great lengths to assert that its decision will advance the “dignity” of same-sex couples. Ante, at 3, 13, 26, 28.[8] The flaw in that reasoning, of course, is that the Constitution contains no “dignity” Clause, and even if it did, the government would be incapable of bestowing dignity.
Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
The majority’s musings are thus deeply misguided, but at least those musings can have no effect on the dignity of the persons the majority demeans. Its mischaracterization of the arguments presented by the States and their amici can have no effect on the dignity of those litigants. Its rejection of laws preserving the traditional definition of marriage can have no effect on the dignity of the people who voted for them. Its invalidation of those laws can have no effect on the dignity of the people who continue to adhere to the traditional definition of marriage. And its disdain for the understandings of liberty and dignity upon which this Nation was founded can have no effect on the dignity of Americans who continue to believe in them.
Dignity and respect are earned. They are not a right. The tools to earn them are a right: Speech, religion, press, laws applied equally, etc.
“dignity?” Can’t find that in the Constitution . . . Hell, I’m still looking for penumbra, privacy, and abortion, and now I gotta’ look for “dignity?”
The Methodist Church has just embraced the ‘deatb dignity’ crap.
Thomas is a brilliant man. And a brave one. He is one of the great one’s of our age. History will see his wisdom better than this greedy, amoral, self-serving, hedonistic generation.
The Supreme Court can’t adjudicate my respect for you.
Dignity in sodomy.That’s going to be a hard sale here in middle America.
A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO “DIGNITY”
Where?
Exactly. It is a most undignified behavior.
Taking it up the rear is dignity, and Bruce Jenner is a girl now. The father of lies is very restless these days.
Justice Thomas has always been my favorite. He understands Natural Law Theory, the basis of the Constitution.
He understands that all men have dignity by the fact that they are human (made in the image of God). But he also understands that using human beings in ways which strip dignity and meaning and purpose from the sex act, is an evil, irrational behavior, and deserves never to be promoted in a “Justice” (virtue) System. It makes “justice” meaningless and removes Reason from a Just Law-—which should be impossible.
Normalizing the irrational, vile acts of homosexuals and forcing children to take “pride” in the vice, should have been outlawed 30 years ago before all the hyper sexualization of children-—but parents (producers who were raping the Corey boys) are too busy to educate and shape the minds of their own children....they trust the sodomites to do a “good” job, which they sure did. Look at the homoerotica best seller among the young——which glorifies anal sex.
American Jurisprudence is all based on Natural Law and God’s Laws-—the foundation of our “justice” system based on Objective Truth.
Kennedy actually flipped Good and Evil which is unconstitutional-—total erasing of our “Justice” system.
But now-—since “abortion” rights-—we have eliminated Virtue and Reason from a Just Law. We have Rule of Man or Satanic (vice) System now. Or equivalent of the Afghanistan “justice” system where they hate “the Other” and use the little boys for sexual recreation, and the other males and goats.
The Supreme Court has opened a big can of something with it’s ,A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO (fill in the Blank)
Powerful words from Justice Thomas. Thanks for posting them.
Also, the homosexual lobby group in the Episcopal Church is called “Integrity”. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is called “Dignity”. I submit that they have neither dignity nor integrity.
While you are looking, find were it says that the federal government gets to define marriage.
Dignity for me but not for thee on top of that. Just look and see if they’ll let actual Christians have that ‘dignity’ that they’re jerking off over.
I didn’t read past the headline.
If they are stating that (the headline) then we can pretty much make up any crap we want and call it a “right.”
Rights are granted from God, and/or Nature if you are not into God. The state cannot grant a right.
Thomas disagrees. He says “Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate.”
Innate. You’re born with it. We are created with it. It cannot be stripped by govnerment or anyone else. It can be kept or given away by the individual and the individual alone.
Does Lady Liberty have a right to dignity, Justice Kennedy? Cause you just held her down while the lesbians shoved a broomstick in her.
The main article from a gay marriage supporter actually argues against the dignity nonsense.
Well I guess it depends on how you mean it. Dignity in the sense that human life is valuable and of greater worth than any other created thing, then yes, it is innate. But a human being of immense worth can degrade himself to commit undignified acts.
Dignity Definition
dictionary.search.yahoo.com
n. noun
1. the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect a man of dignity and unbending principle
2. a composed or serious manner or style the dignity of labor
3. a sense of pride in oneself; self-respect
Thomas is brilliant and I think his basic point is sound. I would say we are born with value but not necessarily dignity. We are born dignity neutral. As we live, we choose to be or not be dignified. Everyone else, then, chooses a response.
People can lose their dignity by being evil savages (see ISIS).
I suspect we have a conflict of definitions of the term. But I still say if people are owed dignity and respect then other people are deprived the freedom of their opinions.
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