CNN Should Apologize for Its Obscene Fearmongering Over Trump Outlawing Gay Marriage

A CNN segment about how Donald Trump’s reelection could yield the end of gay marriage in the United States should yield an apology from the network.

Brown began said segment by declaring that “as Donald Trump is set to return to power, some Americans worried [sic] about the impact of his policies on their lives and the lives of those they love are taking extraordinary steps,” and bringing on a lesbian couple to talk about their decision to get married immediately instead of next year.

The conversation continued apace with Brown asking them what their “biggest fear” is, one half of the couple suggesting that they might be denied access to each other in the hospital, and the other half justifying their fears with the following explanation:

If we look back to Trump’s last term, we can see actions he took that, you know, now, under his term, people could start making cakes for gay couples for their weddings, and that would be a legal right of theirs. They took trans people out of the military. I think there’s so many things in his actions that we have seen that have been scary in the past. And so at this point, we’re just trying to be pragmatic, and logistical, and think about what can we do to protect our own family.

The closest Brown came to pushing back was a line about how Trump had just tapped a gay man to serve as Treasury Secretary and that Mar-a-Lago had served as a gay wedding venue. But even that was followed by the question: “Does any of that provide solace to you?”

Now, no scorn should be reserved for either of these two guests. They aren’t experts and they don’t profess to be as much, which explains why are unable to accurately describe the distinct legal issues at stake in the examples they did bring up and erroneously compared them to the marriage issue. But all of the scorn saved on them should be heaped upon CNN for bringing them on to misinform its audience with the hysterical chyron “TRUMP’S RETURN SPARKS RUSH TO MARRY, HAVE KIDS FOR SOME GAY COUPLES” below them.

At Trump’s direction, the GOP has removed all mention of marriage being a union between “one man and one woman” from its party platform, leading gay conservative leaders like the Log Cabin Republicans’ Charles Moran to celebrate.

“The Republican Party was running constitutional bans on gay marriage in the 2004 presidential election, and now we’re at a place where, 20 years later, the GOP platform is completely caught up with where society is, and quite honestly, a majority of Republicans are, as well, on respecting LGBT equality,” said Moran.

So there is already little to suggest Trump would have any interest in pursuing a ban on gay marriage. But even if he   — or any other state government — did want to pursue such a course, the Supreme Court would first need to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.

That’s not going to happen.

As evidence for the claim that it might, one of Brown’s guests cited Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which he floated the possibility of revisiting Obergefell. Yet not a single other justice signed on to his concurrence.

And Justice Samuel Alito — who is dispositionally and ideologically the second most-likely to want to do away with Obergefell — wrote the following in his majority opinion:

Perhaps this is designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights, but the dissent’s analogy is objectionable for a more important reason: what it reveals about the dissent’s views on the protection of what Roe called “potential life.” The exercise of the rights at issue in Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell does not destroy a “potential life,” but an abortion has that effect.

Also this:

Finally, the dissent suggests that our decision calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Post, at 4–5, 26–27, n. 8. But we have stated unequivocally that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Even if the Court’s originalist bloc hadn’t gone out of its way to express its disinclination to revisit the subject, though, any half-informed observer of its practices could surmise that its respect for stare decisis and consideration of reliance interests would prevent it from overturning Obergefell.

That leaves two possible explanations for the segment: CNN is ignorant of these facts or is deliberately fearmongering for pecuniary and/or political reasons.

Incompetent or despicable — take your pick. Either way, it’s journalistic malpractice and a typically tough look for the “This is an apple,” network.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.