Justice Thomas references slavery in gay marriage dissent

Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court’s only black justice, referenced slavery in his dissent in Friday’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage to swat down the assertion that the ruling provides same-sex couples with “dignity.”

“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” Thomas writes. “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.

{mosads}“The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

Thomas added that the Constitution says that a person’s dignity is “something to be shielded from—not provided by—the State.”

That dissent came as the court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that the Constitution protects a national right to same sex marriage. Often the swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the more liberal-leaning justices to form the coalition against the four conservative-leaning justices. 

Those four judges — Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts — each wrote separate dissents on the ruling. 

Roberts chastised the majority, arguing that the decision had no basis in the Constitution. 

Scalia wrote that while he agreed with Roberts, he wanted to pen his own dissent to warn against the court’s “threat to American Democracy.”