Highlights & Lowlights: June 30, 2012

I'm switching things up a bit this week and writing the best thing first.

The 5-4 closeness of the ruling on the Affordable Care Act was completely predictable. The fact that it was 5-4 UPHOLDING the Affordable Care Act was anything but predictable. I have to say that I'm genuinely surprised that the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate of the ACA (a.k.a. "Obamacare"). I was almost sure that we were heading to the mandate being thrown down as unconstitutional. As I have mentioned, I'm particularly surprised at who the deciding vote ended up being: Chief Justice John Roberts. He is (or was) the judicial darling of the political right. He was appointed by President George W. Bush. He's a bonifide judicial conservative. Unfortunately for Roberts, a lot of conservative politicians are turning on him. One congressman said that with this ruling, he lost two friends; America, and Justice Roberts.

There are parts of the ACA that particularly affect the LGBT community. As the law requires states to create health care exchanges to simplify health care for individuals and businesses, these exchanges can NOT discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identification in any way. This is definitely a win for us, especially in areas that are particularly prone to anti-gay/trans discrimination (southern states, I'm looking at you). I think that this is one of the parts that does not kick in until 2014.

All-in-all, it was a good decision

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While I believe that upholding the ACA is generally a good thing (not just for LGBT people, but for everyone), the way that certain media outlets handled the announcement of the ruling was...less than stellar. It's pretty depressing and a poor indictment on the media in general and I can't sugar-coat that, so I'll let the people from Sourcefed explain it in a more humourous manner: