Tuesday 28 June 2022 02:39 AM 'F*** Clarence Thomas!': Chicago mayor unleashes tirade against SCOTUS justice ... trends now
Anger at Clarence Thomas's call for the Supreme Court to review a range of existing civil rights continued unabated, with The View hosts expressing outrage on Monday, and the mayor of Chicago made her feelings known.
Thomas, a Justice on the Supreme Court, on Friday issued an opinion - separate to the repeal of Roe v. Wade - that supported a review of other civil rights.
The 74-year-old said that states should be able to refuse access to contraception; decline to recognize gay marriages; and even declare gay sex illegal.
On Monday, Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of The View, added her voice to the cacophony of opprobrium.
'I want to make things very clear. I'm very pro-life. I've never been anti-life,' Goldberg said.
Whoopi Goldberg on Monday added her voice to the chorus of anger at Justice Clarence Thomas, who suggested ending gay marriage, access to contraception, and even lawful gay sex
Thomas, 74, went further than any of his Supreme Court colleagues with his writing
'I want people to have the lives they want, but I don't want to force anybody - I don't want anybody coming in my house telling me how to raise my daughter and what she needs because they don't know.
'And I appreciate everybody's religion, but I do not subscribe to your religion. I don't ask you to subscribe to mine.
'And you do not have the right based on your religious beliefs to tell me because what's next? As Clarence Thomas is signaling, they would like to get rid of contraception. Do you understand, sir? No, because you don't have to use it!'
Goldberg noted that Thomas, who is black and whose wife, Ginni, is white, very deliberately ignored the 1967 Loving v Virginia case, which ended a ban on interracial marriages.
He said states should be able to reconsider 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed gay rights; 2003 Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a law against gay sex; and the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, which guaranteed access to contraception.
Goldberg noted that black people were not legally recognized when the Constitution was drawn up, arguing that it evolved.
'We were not in the Constitution either,' she said. 'We were not even people in the Constitution.
'You better hope that they don't come for you, Clarence.
'And say you should not be married to your wife who happens to be white. And you better hope that nobody says, 'You know, well, you're not in the Constitution, you're back to being a quarter of a person,' because that's not going to work either.'
Her comments came a day after the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, who is in a gay marriage, declared at a Pride party: 'F*** Clarence Thomas!'
Lori Lightfoot on Sunday declared at a Chicago Pride parade: 'F*** Clarence Thomas!'
Lightfoot was speaking about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and someone in the crowd shouted at her on the stage.
'And if you read Clarence Thomas's concurrent opinion, he said -,' as she was interrupted.
'Thank you - f*** Clarence Thomas.'
On Saturday, actor Samuel L Jackson dubbed Thomas 'Uncle Clarence' - a reference to the eponymous character of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Uncle Tom was widely seen as compliant and subservient to his white masters.
'How's Uncle Clarence feeling about overturning Loving v Virginia??!!' Jackson tweeted.
The 1967 case declared that state bans on interracial marriages violated the Equal Process Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The decision apparently led to Thomas getting married to Virginia Lamp 20 years later.
Samuel L Jackson, left, accused conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of being an 'Uncle Clarence' following his opinion supporting the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade
Thomas was married to Virginia Lamp, a white woman, in 1987 - 20 years after the landmark Loving v Virginia case which allowed for interracial marriage
The Marvel Cinematic Universe actor asked Thomas how he feels about overturning that decision after he called for the court to 'reconsider' other decisions using the same premise
Thomas - the only black man on the Supreme Court - called for his colleagues to 'reconsider' and potentially overturn other cases decided on the legal authority of 'substantive due process.'
Substantive due process refers to the idea that people have fundamental rights that are not specifically laid out in the Constitution - and was the basis for a number of landmark cases including Loving v Virginia.
'In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell,' Thomas wrote.
Thomas notably did not mention the Loving case as one he thought the court should overturn.
The Supreme Court ruled in the Loving v Virginia decision that 'There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.' The decision allowed for the marriage of Richard Perry Loving, right, and his wife, Mildred, left
Thomas was one of five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the Roe v Wade decision on Friday, which granted women a constitutional right to an abortion
With his tweet on Saturday, Jackson joined the ranks of celebrities speaking out against Friday's Supreme Court decision rolling back nearly five decades of a women's right to get an abortion.
At least 18 states have now banned abortions - and the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, has said that 26 states are 'certain or likely' to ban the procedure.
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