Would the captain of the USS Excelsior have ever said anything like this about Thurgood Marshall, no matter how he had voted on sodomarriage?:
Star Trek actor and gay activist George Takei veered off course in his criticism of Justice Clarence Thomas' same-sex marriage dissent, according to some online critics and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Noting Thomas' language about slaves and people in internment camps not losing their humanity or dignity, Takei tore into Thomas, the only black member currently sitting on the high court.
"He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court," Takei told Fox 10 in Phoenix on Wednesday. "He gets me that angry. He doesn't belong there."
"And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn't he know that slaves were in chains?" Takei continued. "That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years a Slave, you know, they were raped." [emphasis added]
I'm not sure why I'm bothering to correct the substance of a man whose name in Japanese means "is very fond of plasma injector enemas" other than that I need to flesh out the balance of this post with something. So....
Here is the relevant portion of Justice Thomas's Obergefell dissent:
"Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,' they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.
"The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. 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. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away." [emphases added]
In other words, human dignity is internal, an attitude, just as victimhood is. Justice Thomas was not saying that African-American slaves were treated in a dignified manner; only a moron would suggest that, just as only a flaming racist would accuse a black Supreme Court Justice of saying it. Rather, what Justice Thomas was saying is that one can retain one's innate, inalienable personal dignity now matter how viciously one is mistreated - like the way Takei did Justice Thomas, for example. Being victimized, in other words, does not have to render one a victim. After all, what else does "We shall overcome" mean? If you refuse to be defeated in your heart, the other side may win, but you have not yet lost in the sense that truly matters. That's the burning spirit of defiance that is at the glowing core of human dignity, regardless of circumstances.
Some days it's the only thing that keeps me going, to be perfectly candid.
I'm not going to speculate on how "deep" the one-time Enterprise helmsman is, despite the oodles and oodles of doubled entendre possibilities, And it doesn't really matter ultimately; whether Takei's racist slur was propelled by shallow ignorance or malevolent cynicism, the effect is that he deliberately twisted Justice Thomas's words in a way that doesn't lay a glove on the latter but makes him look really, really foolish.
And racist. But being a queer will cover that sin.
And Georgie calls Justice Thomas an "embarrassment"?
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