The Battles Have Begun

There are a record number of court case about discrimination against us, the Supreme Court heard the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, and there have been a number of court cases being held in lower federal courts and also on the state level and most of them we are winning.

For LGBT Rights, 2018 Will Be the Year of the Courts
Reversing a gloomy 2017, advances in equality are occurring around the globe.
The Advocate
By Neela Ghoshal
January 24 2018

It started in India January 8 with an announcement from the Supreme Court that it would revisit section 377 of India’s Penal Code, which criminalizes consensual same-sex conduct. In 2013, a two-judge bench of the court took a giant step backward by reinstating section 377, reversing a celebrated 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that had invalidated the law as unconstitutional. In 2014, nongovernmental organizations filed what is known as a curative petition — a last-resort effort to challenge a Supreme Court ruling. And in 2016, five gay and lesbian Indians filed a writ petition, as individuals directly affected by the law, which prompted the Supreme Court to order a reconsideration of the 2013 decision by a larger bench, saying that the ruling was inconsistent with a recent ruling on privacy rights.
[…]
With regard to same-sex couples, the court chose to go beyond Costa Rica’s query on economic rights. It assessed the steps countries need to take to ensure that same-sex couples benefit from all the same rights as different-sex couples. It concluded that true equal protection of the law could only rest on equal access to the institution of marriage itself. Even if a state established a legal framework for civil unions that guaranteed the same rights as marriage, the court said, the very existence of two separate legal frameworks — one only accessible to couples of different sexes — is a mark of inequality, an acknowledgment that the state values one type of relationship over another. Therefore, the court found, all countries must begin to take steps toward marriage equality.

The court emphasized that its opinion constitutes an authoritative interpretation of countries’ treaty obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights, applicable to all members of the Organization of American States.
[…]
Two days after the Inter-American Court ruling, on January 11, the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice issued his opinion in a case pending before the court. The case involves a Romanian national, Adrian Coman, who married his American partner, Clai Hamilton, in Brussels in 2010. When the couple sought to move to Romania in 2012 under E.U. free movement rules, the Romanian authorities denied a residency permit to Hamilton on the grounds that it does not recognize same-sex marriages.  Coman and Hamilton challenged the refusal, and the Romanian Constitutional Court referred the case to the European Court of Justice.

But back here in the states we are going to be facing an uphill battle in the courts as Trump packs the courts with young conservative who believe that the Bible overrules the Constitution and know little about the law.

Trump’s judge picks: ‘Not qualified,’ prolific bloggers
But Republican senators still get on board.
Politico
By Seung Min Kim
October 17, 2017
President Donald Trump has nominated 50 candidates to lifetime appointments to the federal bench — including a man who asserted transgender children were evidence of “Satan’s plan,” one deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association and a handful of prolific bloggers.

And the GOP has unanimously stuck by Trump’s judges. Senate Republicans have cleared judicial nominees at a comparatively rapid clip this year — even as the conservative base has complained they’re not moving fast enough — and are planning to pick up the pace even more in the coming months.

Among the more eyebrow-raising judges is Charles Goodwin, who has been nominated to the federal bench in Oklahoma. He is the first judicial nominee since 2006 to earn a “not qualified” label from the American Bar Association, which has screened judicial candidates since the 1950s. (It’s possible Barack Obama considered judges the ABA would have found “not qualified,” but his administration worked with the ABA to evaluate nominees before they were announced, something Trump has declined to do.)

So who is advising Trump?

Why it is no other than the Family Research Council, you know the group… it is the one that is labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And remember that federal court appointments are for life! So these young judges might be serving on the bench for 40 years.