This is what Revanchism looks like. Get ready for more. The Obama Era will seem like a hazy dream by the time 2025 rolls around.

Sad, and so unintuitive. Married is Married right? A spouse is a spouse is a spouse. Except some spouses are apparently more equal.

The greatest threat to society that will last for generations to come is the impact Trump and the evangelic right who control him on this issue will have on the judiciary at every level in this country.

I don't think we should panic about this. Consider the facts: this was a denial of a writ of certiorari; it's just the court passing on hearing the case. It only takes four justices to vote to grant a writ of ceriorari, so at least one of the liberals was comfortable declining it, and none of them were troubled enough to register a formal objection. The Texas Supreme Court did not affirmatively rule that withholding benefits from same sex couples is constitutional (in fact, no court has), it merely asked the trial court to make a finding of fact as to whether there could be a rational basis for differential treatment of same sex and opposite sex couples under the precedent established by Obergefell. There clearly isn't, and the current SCOTUS reaffirmed that when it summarily overturned an Arkansas court that tried to rule that the discriminatory denial of presumption of parentage to same sex couples had a rational basis and was constitutional. The Texas case is different because no court has actually found legal discrimination to be constitutional; there is no substantive disagreement with SC precedent to overturn yet. If and when there is, I am confident that the court as currently composed would summarily overturn it.

@4 sounds right about this denial, but I sure wish all good health to RBG.

And fuck Gorsuch. Nobody should ever give him a public forum without including the question: should the party controlling the Senate block a well-qualified nominee from a president with one year left? Two? Four?

@4: Yeah, but it is more fun to pretend that the evil court voted it down, and our savior Hillary Clinton would have foiled their heinous plot.

Still a shame that it even requires this judicial rigmarole, though.

<2014 conservatives>
Marriage is sacred so the gays can't have it, but we're happy to give them "domestic partnerships" which will have all the same legal rights just they won't be able to call it marriage.

<2015 conservatives>
Gays can have marriage but marriage is just a meaningless piece of paper. What you can't have is any of the legal rights of marriage.

Yeah. This would never have happened if Merrick Garland was on the court and/or Hillary Clinton was in the White House. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

not a surprising move really, and a misleading article about what SCOTUS did. They refused to hear the case, which makes sense in light of the path previous gay marriage cases decided by SCOTUS took. Obergefell really only dealt with the question of the right to marry, and Windsor only dealt with the question of if the *federal* government was required to recognize gay marriages. Neither case addressed the matter of local government marriage benefits. As the Houston case was not tried in federal court yet, and that this isn't a national issue *yet*, there was no reason for SCOTUS to jump in to intervene at this time. Houston is going to have to present their case from the bottom of federal court and work their way up the ladder. And this likely will have to start happening in other federal court districts to force multiple appeals court decisions to trigger a conflict in the district court decisions, which is how most cases get heard by SCOTUS. And it only takes 4 justices to make the decision to hear a case, so Garland and Clinton would have had zero impact on how this happened.