Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more “interesting,” Justice Alito and the Doo-Wops serve up a new album guaranteed to top the charts and convulse the nation. 

Among the many things we should learn from this—the uselessness of judicial confirmation hearings, the endemic mendacity born of high ambition, the obvious fact that we no longer live in a system of “majority rules” but one of “minority vetoes,” the toxic effects of religion on a secular society, the true intentions and blatant misogyny held by the conservative right—there’s another lesson we should not ignore.

Our rights are not guaranteed.

The Constitution can be amended, and amendments can be repealed. Laws can be passed and subsequently stricken. Executive Orders only last until there’s a new butt sitting behind the Resolute desk.

There is no right, no legal expectation, no course of justice upon which we currently rely that cannot be taken away by a minority bent on its removal.

None.

The good news is, we know what to do.
The bad news is, it won’t be easy.

What we need to do—Trigger Warning: this may make white cis-het males feel bad about themselves—is dismantle the patriarchy. We need to eliminate the veto power of the minority, and never, ever relent on codifying, implementing, enforcing, and protecting the rights society adopts. Only one in three Americans believe abortions should be illegal in most or all cases, and yet they’re the ones driving this decades-long battle to turn women of childbearing age into Incubators of the State.

Putting aside the incredibly reductive and retrograde reasoning put forth by Alito & Co. in their draft majority opinion (and some of it is really quite shocking when given even passing thought), it is clear that the conservative/religious right has a stranglehold on the GOP, and that they are bent on imposing their theocratic beliefs on the rest of us. (Note: these are the same people who screamed about their personal liberty during mask mandates; irony isn’t dead, but it is picking its battles.) 

So, when we reestablish the rights of privacy, self-determination, and personal sovereignty—and I am convinced we eventually will—we need to deny ourselves that victory lap, that well-earned rest, and keep the barricades firm, because regardless the laws we pass and amendments we enact, they will come at us again.

Raise your voice.
Stay united.
Vote them out.

k