While the nation still eagerly awaits the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warns that predictions and assumptions about the nature of the ruling (both positive and negative) can actually be a “dangerous thing.”
“Is it not a little spooky that so much of the country is basically already assuming how the same-sex marriage case is going to go?” Maddow asked, playing devil’s advocate on Monday night’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, citing a recent New York Times profile of Justice Anthony Kennedy that praises him for his “tolerance” on gay rights, even though a decision on marriage equality is yet to come.
“A sense of inevitability can be a powerful thing, but it can also be a dangerous thing,” she continued. “The reason this case is being decided by the Supreme Court in the first place is that the seemingly inevitable, unstoppable march towards nationwide legal gay marriage was in fact stopped when an appeals court ruled last fall that some state marriage bans were legal. It was all inevitable until one day it was not. The Supreme Court could really rule against gay marriage, or the justices could split the difference somehow. Or the court could, yes, legalize gay marriage nationwide … we really do not know right now.”
Watch the last night’s full episode of The Rachel Maddow Show below.
