In honor of the momentous, yet decades late, decision to legalize same-sex marriage on a federal level in the United States, I have drawn a hippo and named him Kennedy. To be honest, I started the drawing of the hippo yesterday before the Supreme Court became rational. Hippos have not much to do with the Supreme Court or same-sex marriage, but Kennedy looks good on a rainbow background. Besides, if they knew or cared what it was, I’m sure hippos would approve of same-sex marriage, because they’re cool.

Thank you, SCOTUS majority, for not taking the sissy way out and merely recognizing same-sex marriage across state lines. No, you went all the way and legalized it. Good job on you!

As to the dusty dissenters, well, screw you. Roberts, go retire somewhere with your hatred to keep you warm at nights, and take the other three curmudgeons with you. That the SCOTUS minority of wizened windbags is having a terrible week doesn’t disturb me as you’ve caused me many in the past.

I have a few words for Scalia, the squeakiest wheel on this particular go-kart. In light of your opinion on Citizen’s United, I’d particularly like to call you out on this bit of double-dealing hypocrisy from your dissenting opinion:

This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

In the Citizens United ruling, you took, as you say, the “most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776” away from “the People” and handed it to the highest bidder in the form of “constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine.”

In the Citizens United case, you didn’t allow something so trifling as people getting married; your ruling took a hacksaw to the underpinnings of American democracy as a whole. Oh, and you also turned corporations into people. How corporations = people still boggles my tiny primate mind. And, no, I’m not likely to get over it or stop bringing it up any time soon.

So, Scalia, I accuse you of the same thing that you’re accusing the majority of today. You go on an on about abuse of power, legislative meddling and chicanery by the SCOTUS majority, when you’re guilty of enacting legislation, or as you call it, “super-legislative power” in the Citizens United case. I suppose if you’re Antonin Scalia, it just depends on which side of the fence you’re on as to whether something’s an abuse of power.

Besides, I don’t even believe that the majority is guilty of abuse of power since Kennedy’s opinion is chockablock with legislative precedence that backs up the ruling. I totally agree with this part of your dissenting opinion though, Scalia:

A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

In view of that statement of yours, would you kindly repeal your Citizens United ruling? Thanks in advance.

One last thing, Scalia: at the same time you accuse Kennedy of using high-flown, flowery language, shame on you for saying “Huh?” in a SCOTUS opinion. A little pomp and circumstance is acceptable, even expected, from the highest court in the land. You do realize that your “Huh?” and the disparaging remarks you made will be on the record forever, or as long as our battered (at your hands) democracy stands, right?

Anyway, personal morals have no business mingling with the law. I can’t say it any better than this line from Kennedy’s majority opinion:

…when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied.

Congratulations to all the people who can now get married anywhere in the US. It’s about damn time.

Obligatory, shameless self-promotion: you can buy your own Kennedy here.