Finally, a rainbow of hope

Amidst partisan bickering, a moment of legal common sense

It’s been a long three months.

And it has started to wear me down.

It just seems like nothing is getting better. I keep looking for that ray of hope and encouragement. Instead, we get turmoil and pandemic.

The Coronavirus is the ultimate Mother Nature gotcha. Oh, you think you’ve got you life organized and working well? Let’s just inject a microscopic virus and watch the world turn upside down. Earlier this week the CDC said in a typical day over 25,000 people were infected and over 600 died.

And these shootings and killings of black men are incomprehensible. They just keep happening, right in the midst of national marches to call attention to the fact that they keep happening. It is mind boggling and horrible.

But I guess what’s been bothering me is I haven’t seen a way out. Everything is so intensely partisan — now you’re making a political statement if you wear a mask? — it seems people are just shouting past each other.

Which is why it was such a welcome breath of fresh air to hear that the Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote, ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender Americans from workplace discrimination.

First of all 6-3! The New York Times said it would be “an understatement” to say LGBTQ advocates were surprised. They were, the Times said, “stunned.”

For good reason. Until yesterday, it was legal in half the states in the country to fire (or not hire) someone who was gay or transgender. This blows that nonsense completely out of the water.

On “The Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough called it “One of the biggest culture war defeats in the past 50 years.”

But best of all, voting for the inclusion, and writing the affirmative ruling was Justice Neil Gorsuch, the first Supreme Court appointee of President Donald Trump, and considered a rock solid conservative vote.

Gorsuch declined to toe a political line and applied a novel and encouraging line of reasoning — common sense.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of another sex,” Gorsuch wrote. Therefore, that is discrimination.

Hard to argue with that, but Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh gave it a go.

No one in 1964, they insisted, would have thought sex discrimination would have meant sexual orientation.

Because, as we know, there were no gay people before 1964, so how could they have been discriminated against?

The reaction to the ruling has been telling. Trump seemed bemused, giving it a hearty “whatever,” and saying it was “a very powerful decision.”

What is more likely is the president heard the whoosh of history passing him by.

Gay rights is no longer a wedge issue in this country. The Washington Post cites recent Gallup Polls that says 53 percent of Americans “supported new anti-discrimination laws” for gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people. Sixty-seven percent thought same sex marriage should be legal.

Also interesting was the lack of pushback from Republicans in Congress. Conservative stalwarts like Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. John Thune said they were fine with the ruling.

Even Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a hard core Trump supporter declined to pick up the argument. He said they were more interested in other issues.

“Religious freedom and abortion rise far higher in the hierarch of concerns of faith-based voters,” he said.

So that’s the narrative. American has seen the light on LGBT issues and the Supreme Court is reflecting that.

But I think there is more to this.

I’ve been asked to stop saying this at my house because apparently I repeat myself, but just some thoughts about the Supreme Court.

It is the apex of a legal career. And the men and women who reach it are top jurists in the profession. We may disagree with their politics, but they aren’t hacks. They are serious about the law. They don’t take these decisions lightly.

Gorsuch is a conservative, but he’s also a judge. He’s there, as Justice John Roberts said in his confirmation, to be an umpire, to call balls and strikes.

Trump may have forgotten, but you can bet the justices haven’t — this is a lifetime appointment. When the history of this court is written, four years of off-the-wall Tweets by a president will be a footnote.

And it isn’t as if Trump wasn’t warned. Back in 2017 when he was ranting at “so-called” judges who stymied his Muslim travel ban, Gorsuch publicly said the comments were “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” And remember, Gorsuch was only Trump’s nominee at that point.

He could have lost his nomination, but instead he did the right thing. And now, two years later, he’s done it again.

Jeffrey Rosen, CEO of the National Constitution Center, called the ruling an inspiration for “Americans all over the country, on both sides of the aisle, hungry for some vision of non-partisan reason.”

And for a moment, at least, we had that.

And, for a moment, I felt better.

OK, it is only a newsletter. But it keeps me out of everyone’s hair for a Tuesday morning, so that’s something. And incredibly, it is free. How do we do it? Volume. Want to subscribe? There’s a button for that.

It is true that sports can be a good model for racial identity. But sports has work to do too. My column from the PD

You may have seen something about this last week. A talk show guest named Rob Parker decided to — out of the blue as near as we can tell — take shots at Steph Curry. Parker called him “a high-paid Harlem Globetrotter.”

I would venture to say that today’s athlete sees the Globetrotters as characters from a bygone era, when black athletes traveled the country, clowning around and putting on shows.

There’s more to Parker’s clickbait claims, and I debunk them in my Santa Rosa Press Democrat column but this seems like more than just a basketball discussion.

Parker has done this before. Back when Robert Griffin III was the toast of the NFL, Parker was fired from ESPN when he wondered if Griffin was “a brother, or is he a cornhole brother?”

Later he added, “He’s not one of us. He’s kind of black, but he’s not really.”

The message was clear. Griffin was not authentic enough.

And now, to take on Curry, whose teammates talk openly about how he’s faced discrimination because he is light-skinned, seems suspicious.

And it also says that we all have work to do on racial identity — including sports.

So, we have to do a pledge break. To keep this going I need your support. So I am asking you to continue to pay absolutely nothing for this newsletter. Your non-contribution will keep us going for another week. And thank you. Oh, send this to someone else? Right here.

The NFL pushes ahead with the season, regardless of risk

The Big Three professional sports, Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NFL are all trying to restart their seasons. And they are doing it at virtually the same time.

As we have seen, baseball is a mess. The players and owners have been in such a bickerfest that they’ve convinced us both sides are selfish and greedy. Let us know when something happens guys.

The NBA seemed to have it all worked out. Games would be in Orlando, 22 teams, a limited schedule and then the playoffs. But lately there’s been some pushback from the players. They worry, as we all do, about the virus, about possible injury and about playing at a time of social unrest. Mark their season down as a maybe.

But the NFL has resolutely marched forward. They are going to play regardless.

And the odd thing is, as I said in my Inside the 49ers blog post football may be the sport most susceptible to catching Coronavirus. Baseball and basketball players bump into each other, but football players actively search out players to come in contact with. It seems like there could be some serious problems.

I mean surely the NFL isn’t just going to put people out there and hope they don’t get sick?

But that is how it looks now.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Compliments and suggestions welcome. Criticism not so much. Twitter: @cwnevius