Civil rights fill critics with dread

Great Scott, it's Dred Scott.

At least that's what we're supposed to believe now in the heady days following the U.S. Supreme Court's Friday ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, clearing the way for legal same-sex marriage in all 50 United States.

Several conservative critics of the ruling, including GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King, Family Leader chieftain and failed gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats and others, swiftly compared the landmark gay rights ruling to the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, dashing a slave's bid for freedom and denying American citizenship to all African Americans.

Now, I understand there are concerns that Friday's ruling poses a threat to religious freedom, although I believe they've been vastly overstated for political effect. We can debate whether Justice Kennedy's ruling was too long on golden prose and too short on legal brass tacks, but I think it fits comfortably among the High Court's civil rights milestones. I fully support the outcome, but understand a 5-4 decision has its detractors, some of whom make perfectly valid arguments, even if I flatly disagree.

But Dred Scott isn't one of them. Tell us it's like Dred Scott, and you're basically telling us you think we're stupid, we don't understand our country's history and we don't know the difference between true injustice and the kind manufactured by politicians to drum up votes or bucks from the outraged.

The long, heartbreaking Dred Scott saga is the story of a man living in our nation at a time when your freedom largely depended on what state you lived in. Slave or free. It was a time when many of our country's most prominent politicians and judges believed that slavery was God's will. The Missouri Supreme Court basically said as much in overturning a lower court decision granting Scott his freedom.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in the court's decision that when the founders signed a Declaration of Independence declaring ”all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” they surely did not intend it to cover any African Americans, slave or free. Scott and his wife, Harriet, were simply trying to live their lives, but instead became entangled within the raging culture war of their time.

So please explain to me how granting gay Americans access to the freedom to marry in every state, not just in states where voters or courts had ruled on the side of liberty, is just like sustaining bondage. A ruling declaring there's no constitutional rationale for making same-sex couples second-class citizens is somehow akin to a ruling denying citizenship to blacks. You can't be serious.

And it's not serious. It's a vain attempt to cast a fading crusade against civil rights in noble terms, to dress up its usual suspects in Lincoln's stovepipe hat.

As Iowans know well, it's a sad pitch that won't sell. Marriage equality isn't going anywhere. And over time, Americans will realize there's plenty to celebrate, and nothing to dread.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com