Inland Empire Progressive

The current majority of the Supreme Court of the United States can no longer be seen as a neutral arbiter of law, they are, plain and simple, a power‑grabbing activist tribunal intent on stripping away the civil rights of same‑sex couples and openly flouting the will of the American people. Back in 2015, the Court rightly ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same‑sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. That decision wasn’t merely symbolic; it recognized that the liberty and equality guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment apply just as much to gay and lesbian couples as to their heterosexual peers. But today we find ourselves staring down the barrel of what looks like a targeted rollback, disguised as judicial review. Recent filings indicate that the Court is considering taking up a case brought by Kim Davis, a former county clerk who refused to issue licenses to same‑sex couples, seeking to dismantle Obergefell entirely. Instead of defending settled law and the rights of Americ...

While Rep. Gary Miller and Sen. Bob Dutton haven’t talked about it much, there have been events over the course of the last four years that have affected the gay community. From the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to President Obama’s evolution on the issue, and the non-enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the gay community has achieved more policy progress than either Immigration or Climate change. On the federal level and on the state level these two conservative candidates haven’t evolved in any way on the gay rights issue in a fundamental way. They still possess an early 20th Century mentality on the issue, even though their party has a caucus of gay conservatives (the Log Cabin Republicans). Most conservative gay candidates have to be closeted in order to run for any local office. Just look what happened to Bill Postmus here in the Inland Empire to find out what happens to gay conservatives in the Republican Party. No wonder so many of them vote Libertarian! As...