1. A U.S. service member who worked in a military sexual assault prevention program has been accused of a sexual crime. In the latest incident, an Army sergeant first class, assigned to such a program at Fort Hood, Texas, is being investigated for alleged sexual assault, pandering, abusive sexual contact and maltreatment of subordinates.

2. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski was placed in charge of a branch of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program, and he oversaw a five-person office. In the first week of May, he was arrested on allegations that he attacked a woman and groped her buttocks and breasts in an Arlington, Virginia, parking lot.

3. Jennifer Norris, a retired Air Force veteran, says she was raped, sexually assaulted and retaliated against on numerous occasions by four individuals, over a period that included her time with the Maine Air National Guard. Norris now works with the Military Rape Crisis Center and the organization Protect Our Defenders.

4. In Alaska,, a military jury this month convicted a ­Marine Corps recruiter of ­first-degree sexual assault in the rape of a 23-year-old female civilian but did not sentence him to prison.

5. In Texas, an Air Force recruiter will face a military court next month on charges of rape, forcible sodomy and other crimes involving 18 young women he tried to enlist over a three-year period.

6. In Oregon, an Army staff sergeant pleaded guilty in March to having sex with a 17-year-old girl in a recruiting office.

7. In Arizona, an Army staff sergeant was charged in November with having a sexual relationship with a minor after he allegedly took a 16-year-old student to a park on multiple occasions and exchanged nude photos with her.

8. In Oklahoma, an Air Force staff sergeant was convicted of dereliction of duty by a military court in November after he had sex with a recruit, in a relationship that began with sexually explicit text messages.

9. At Lackland Air Force Base in Texas more than 30 instructors have been investigated on suspicion of abusing or mistreating recruits.

10. A court-martial for Brig. Gen. Jeffery Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne is set to begin June 25 on charges that include forcible sodomy, indecent acts, violating orders and adultery. Sinclair is also accused of violating a prohibition against U.S. troops in Afghanistan possessing pornography. A female captain who worked for Sinclair on deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq says Sinclair physically forced her to perform oral sex. The woman says the general also threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about their relationship.

In his defense, it is alleged that the general said:

‘I’M A GENERAL. I’LL DO WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT’.

Hey, I’m no expert but that sounds pretty good to me. I’d vote for acquittal and would recommend putting the female captain into military prison for the rest of her life. What impudence!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz8PpSHvBfQ

TINA! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGoLq3c4SDc

Several persons convicted of sex crimes in Iowa have been given permits to carry guns. On “both sides of the aisle” the screaming has begun. The general hue and cry is this: “How can it be that such terrible people are allowed to go packing?”

Here is the right response: THE WHINERS ARE A BUNCH OF DOPES. In general, the recidivist rate for so-called sex offenders is lower than for other offenders. This is definitely true in Iowa.

An FBI official, the president of the Iowa State Sheriffs’ & Deputies’ Association, the president of the Iowa State Police Association and two state lawmakers told The Des Moines Register they have public safety concerns after learning that a two-year-old state law on gun permits allows registered sex offenders to obtain a weapons permit.

“It does seem to go contrary to what the whole point or the whole purpose” of the sex offender registry is, said Steve Conlon, Registered Imbecile and deputy unit chief of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s Evil Minds Research Museum in Quantico, Va. [SG: That's good information because I thought that only 97.63% of the sex offender registry was directed at keeping guns out of the hands of THE DISGUSTING PERVERTS.]

Self-appointed statistics maven [and underground voyeur] Jerry Dunbar offered this brilliant observation: “My concern of a sex offender having a gun is they try to typically rule in a bullish way to influence people — and just the presence of a gun on a hip could be a threat to get people to cooperate,” said Washington County Sheriff Jerry Dunbar, who is president of the Iowa State Sheriffs’ & Deputies’ Association. Dunbar added, “They intimidate to get what they want.” [SG: What do they want, Jerry, you lame brain. Tell us. By the way, Jerry, go back to school and learn English.]

Rob Burdess, a Newton police detective and the president of the Iowa State Police Association, was unaware that sex offenders are being issued weapon permits until he was asked about it by the Register. He noted that people with felonies or domestic abuse convictions are typically unable to obtain weapon permits, so he questions the logic of allowing sex offenders — even those convicted of non-felony offenses — to carry weapons in public. Burdess is also famous throughout our solar system for his contributions to the field of advanced mathematical logic — a real plus for Iowa State police. Tossing his Statistics For Everyday Cops into the trash bin, Burdess asked the rhetorical question, “Who’s to say they’re not a safety concern with weapons? They’ve already shown propensity to be sexually violent, so the escalation can be the use of weapons.” [SG: Or perhaps homemade bombs which, after all, has always been the dream weapon of drooling perverts.]

JILL LEVENSON presumes to bring light rather than heat to the debate, proving she is a very stupid person. Levenson, a national expert on sexual violence and an associate professor at Lynn University in Florida has the colossal gall to cite facts. Levenson, citing more than three dozen research studies or articles, has written papers and given testimony that shows 5% to 14% of known sex offenders will commit a subsequent sex crime within three to six years after incarceration. That is far lower than rates for other types of crime. [SG: Hey! Who allowed her to testify? She is spoiling the game for the demagogues.]

There are no known studies that review the rates of crimes using guns committed by sex offenders after their initial convictions, according to Conlon of the FBI and researchers at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice. That information would be useful in assessing the level of risk created by giving gun permits to sex offenders, Conlon said. [SG: There are no studies showing the percentage of children under age 9 who like to spend their days chewing on baseball gloves but I, if nobody else, desperately want to know THE FACTS. The data would be useful for something, even if I don't know what.]

National uniform crime data from 2006 — the most recent data available — show that less than 1% of all reported sex offenses included the use of a firearm, according to Jason Rydberg, a graduate student at Michigan State. [SG: We need guns to shoot people like Rydberg who want to spoil our fun.]

Iowa numbers mirror the national trend. Of the roughly 5,750 people on Iowa’s sex offender registry, 47 — or less than 1% — used guns in their crimes, according to data from the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, a national organization focused on the prevention of sexual abuse, generally advocates for cases to be reviewed individually when trying to determine whether a sex offender is likely to re-offend or jeopardize public safety. “There’s no blanket way of stating that sex offenders are more dangerous than everybody else,” said Maia Christopher, executive director of the association. [SG: Judge people on their individual merits? Sounds unAmerican to me.]

Republican state Rep. Clel Baudler, a former state trooper, isn’t reassured by the type of research offered by Levenson or groups like the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. Baudler, who proudly displays his laminated certificate as a member of the NIA, (National Idiots Association) to all who enter his office offers us this insight into his “thinking”: “If I was a sheriff and you’re a registered sex offender, I’d look at what you were found guilty of and I would have no problem saying, ‘You might be eligible but you’re going to have to sue me to get it. I’ll see you in an administrative hearing and we’ll bring this out in public if that’s what you want.’” [SG: Baudler is my kind of guy. Like him, I believe that after we determine a lascivious pervert is no danger to anybody, let's kill him anyway -- just to be on the safe side and on the side of bigoted morons everywhere.]

Republican Rep. Matt Windschitl indicated that he believes Iowa’s new weapons permit law doesn’t need to be revised to specifically ban sex offenders. People convicted of felonies, including sex offenders, are already prohibited from obtaining a permit, he emphasized.

But the top-ranking Democrat on the House Public Safety Committee disagreed with Windschitl over whether Iowa’s permit law needs revision.

“I wasn’t aware that sex offenders would be given permits,” said Democrat Rep. Bob Kressig of Cedar Falls. “This is definitely a concern.” [SG: If there is one thing inferior to the brain of a Republican it is the brain of a Democrat.]

At a minimum, Kressig would like the Legislature to agree to look at the issue for potential action next year. [SG: A committee to study the ISSUE!]

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I have only one thing left to say: DON’T BAN AUTOMATIC WEAPONS WITH 100 ROUNDS CAPACITY. Without guns how the hell are we going to shoot all the legislators?

Now, at last, we can go to bed. The Bad Guy is in the custody of even worse guys and we, the public, are delighted. We can call off the media drudges who thrill maniacally to each day’s dull pursuit of a minor criminal. Yes, the media drudges who do their best to promote hysteria.

The nation came close to saying freedom of movement is as nothing compared to the danger of a lunatic on the loose. We were inches away from accepting authoritarian martial law as national policy. Few were the complaints about the Boston lockdown. It was, in the minds of the dullards, worth it. A killer was on the loose. Blah, blah, blah. I was chastened in my home as a ridiculous cynic for my disgust with the media. TV pundits and gurus had confiscated all the major channels for what they thought was best and proper. Too hell with my preference for lamebrain situation comedies. You’ll watch what we tell you to watch and you’ll love it…from the safety of your living room. Don’t you dare go outside! And when those helmeted post-apocalyptic creatures with menacing batons knock on your door demanding to enter without search warrants you will be obedient. Otherwise they will bash your brains out. And don’t expect that to get any TV coverage. You were so glad the forces of law and order were on the job 24 hours per day.

Would it not have been better to try for as much normalcy as possible? Did TV, FBI and local governments have to make hysteria their byword? Well, of course, they did. Ours is a nation of lambs and sheep that needs to be watched over. First madness,then normalcy. Without the first, you can’t appreciate the second.

For the third time I revisit the great Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) of 2001. The signatories to the Initiative wrote, By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

A great beginning that went haywire in its end. I reject the need to acknowledge and cite my sources. So long as the person who uses the material of others
a. does not profit commercially from his “plagiarism”
b. does not interfere with the promotion of the original sources or inhibit them in any way
c. does not misrepresent the viewpoint of those sources and intends them no harm
d. is too small an operation relative to those from whom he borrows to have serious impact on the world
e. is greatly inconvenienced by the need to gain clearance for his use of “purloined” material or is, in his opinion, overcharged for its use

then he may take what he wishes and even, if it serves his vanity, represent the work as his own. Vanity and its revelation are minor character defects. Copyright and patents are evils and we need not respect them even when we may be forced to bow down before them under threat of great harm coming to us for defying them.

Even Tony Scalia can’t get it wrong all the time.

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Police following up on drunk driving investigations will no longer be able to draw their suspect’s blood without a court order authorizing the search, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

In a 5-4 decision, with Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy and Elena Kagan making up the majority, the court ruled that the natural expiration of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute “destruction of evidence,” which would otherwise give officers cause for a warrantless search.

The decision in Missouri v. McNeely springs from a DUI arrest in which an officer claimed that blood was drawn without a warrant or the suspect’s consent because the suspect’s liver was in the process of destroying evidence of a crime. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in favor of the arrested man’s contention that the search was unconstitutional and violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

“As an initial matter, States have a broad range of legal tools to enforce their drunk-driving laws and to secure blood-alcohol content evidence without undertaking warrantless noncon­sensual blood draws,” Justice Sotomayor wrote for the court’s majority. “For example, all 50 States have adopted implied consent laws that require motorists, as a condition of operating a motor vehicle within the State, to consent to BAC testing if they are arrested or otherwise detained on suspicion of a drunk-driving offense.”

“Such laws impose significant consequences when a motorist withdraws consent; typically the motorist’s driver’s license is immediately suspended or revoked, and most States allow the motorist’s refusal to take a BAC test to be used as evidence against him in a subsequent criminal prosecution,” she added, noting there is “no evidence” to suggest restricting such blood draws has impeded enforcement efforts.

“We hold that in drunk-driving investigations, the natu­ral dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant,” the court’s majority opinion concluded.

Reacting to the ruling, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Legal Director Steven Shapiro praised the court’s agreement with justices in Missouri who clung to the integrity of the Fourth Amendment. “We know from experience that drunk-driving laws can be strictly enforced without abandoning constitutional rights,” he said in an advisory. “Today’s decision appropriately recognizes what half the states have already demonstrated — that maintaining highway safety does not require sacrificing personal privacy.”

Escapees from Transylvania, Breyer, Alito and, of course, Clarence Thomas voted to “take the blood!” Roberts straddled.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7llu2aQRSQ

I speak as the president of the Gendin Idiosyncrasy Club.

I’m glad the Democrats went down to defeat yesterday as they continued their stupid, vicious quest for law and order. I want guns only in the hands of registered hoodlums and Mafia gangsters. I live in dread of gun-packing police who flaunt their weapons openly and I’m not crazy about rifle-bearing “sportsmen.”

Obama and his sycophants present their opponents as either irrational or in the pockets of the moneyed NRA. Bah! Obama himself and his weird followers are in pursuit of ducks, geese and deer…and proud of it. These creatures do not have a forceful lobby. The best that bears can do is to wear those funny placards around their necks that say, SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF BEARS TO BEAR ARMS. That won’t hack it.

I would be glad to give up my 2nd Amendment right to go packing in the dismal hope I will some day bring down some humans who trespass in my garden if those Democratic trespassers would be willing to surrender once and for all their hunting licenses. What’s that saying? Quid pro quo? I love mongrelized Hungarian.

Much as I love my little 6-shot 38 caliber revolver, it ain’t much compared to those heavy rifles you can buy at Cabella’s Store For Killing. I can make the sacrifice if the Cabella gang can do likewise.

Meanwhile, Kenya man, quit your bellyaching.

If you are one of those weird perverts who don’t appreciate hot sex with children under ten years old, there isn’t much I can do to help you overcome your profound sickness. However, I can show you the high cost of punishing child pornographers.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. vs. Booker struck down the provision of the federal sentencing statute that required federal district judges to impose a sentence within the Federal Guidelines range. In other words, go for it, Baby. Shove ‘em deep into a hellhole if you feel like it.

The lower courts had to revisit Booker’s sentencing in light of the Supreme Court decision. Booker was re-sentenced by the same judge to the same 30 year sentence he originally received which was longer than the 21 year sentence the judge would have been able to impose had the guidelines not been made merely advisory.

Since United States v. Booker, the federal government has spent nearly $30 BILLION on incarceration, which exceeds the GDP of many countries including North Korea. Of this, over $2 BILLION was spent on incarcerating child pornography offenders; 12,115 have been sentenced (not all to imprisonment, but most) under the guidelines since 2006. What makes this rather startling is looking at other major offense categories. For example, in the same period of time, over four times as many people have been sentenced for fraud offenses (54,813); however, the total cost of incarcerating those individuals was almost a billion dollars LESS! ($2.1 billion for child pornography; $1.3 billion for fraud). In other words, incarcerating 12,115 child pornography offenders cost the public $2.1 billion, while incarcerating nearly 55,000 fraud offenders cost $1.3 billion. Why the difference? Well, because of the increasingly longer sentences imposed on child pornography offender than for any other major offense category. What that translates into is that the actual annual cost per offender is far higher for child pornography offenders than for any other major offense category.

Most of those convicted of this crime are non-violent offenders with no propensity to molest our children. But you should accept this only if you like to go by the evidence. Screw the evidence. If you are a solid Wheaties-eating American, you know bad when it wanders into view. Not only don’t you want these sex maniac creeps to receive sentences limited to federal guidelines, you don’t want them living within traveling distance to your neighborhood. After all, they’ll park their cars close to your kids’ schools and OGLE THE SWEETHEARTS! How much villainy can an upright, God-fearing citizen put up with?

The federal sequester, (the across-the-board cuts in federal spending) that took effect March 1, is an assault on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The sequester is financially squeezing federal defenders. Consider what is happening in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, which comprise the federal trial courts for New York City and some surrounding counties.

There are 280 prosecutors against 38 Federal Defender lawyers, who represent approximately 40 percent of the New York metropolitan area’s federal criminal defendants. The sequester will slash the budget of the defenders for the next six months by 20 percent by forcing these 38 defense lawyers to take an average of six weeks of furlough, more than one day a week. The alternative was laying off one third of the lawyers. As of now, the prosecutors will take no furlough…. In the landmark case of Gideon vs. Wainwright in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a notorious decision that proclaimed that only in capital cases do defendants have a right to state-appointed counsel. But now, what we assumed to be a Sixth Amendment right is subordinate to good old-fashioned MONEY. Are you really surprised?

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A GOOD DOSE OF DEATH

Amnesty International has released its annual compilation of capital punishment trends. Only 21 countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012, the same as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier. It said at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide in 2012, two more than 2011, and at least 1,722 death sentences were imposed in 58 countries, compared with 1,923 imposed in 63 countries the year before….[Don't ask me how 58 countries carried out executions when only 21 are recorded as carrying out executions. Mathematics is a mysterious thing.]

The big slayers, as per usual, were China, whose total was not released, Iran 314, Iraq 129, Saudi Arabia 79. The United States trailed badly with 43. People were zapped, hanged, bludgeoned and poisoned for a range of crimes including non-violent drug-related and economic offences, but also for “apostasy”, “blasphemy”, and “adultery.” [Hell, nothing wrong with making these capital offenses.] India, Japan, Pakistan and Gambia, all of which had seemed to aboard the anti-death penalty bandwagon have now reversed course. An Amnesty official in Singapore said, “Every human life is precious”. This is downright WRONG but you get the idea which, in general, is that killing is bad business and we can get along just fine without it. It doesn’t do much good for the anti-death penalty crowd to exaggerate and wander into stupidity. Of course the case against killing is made easy by the insanity of the countries that rely on it. In Iran, four people were executed last June for “enmity against God.” This should make atheists of us all.

It’s mostly Islamic states that are committed to butchering but please don’t let that influence your good opinion of Muslim people. Do you want a scorecard? Sure. You can’t tell your butchers without them: In addition to the above champions of death, we have Afghanistan, Bangladesh, N. Korea, Indonesia, Ghana, Palestine (those sweethearts who would restrict the penalty to Jews, if they had the power to do so), Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. Small fry trying to make names for themselves.

The USA is fiendishly trying to maintain its status as a big leaguer with its 43 executions: Texas (15) and Mississippi (6) lead the way but don’t count a few others out as mere pretenders to the throne. Awaiting their moments to die are 77 others in such hotbeds of common sense as Florida (22), California (13) and Pennsylvania (7).

Cuba, that godawful bastion of communism, does not have even one person under sentence of death. Don’t you just hate Fidel Castro?

[Or is dat "nohow."]

Back in the 1990s, the Supreme Court said that while prisoners have the right to pursue a legal claim, they don’t have “an abstract, freestanding right to a law library.”

For years after the ruling, even though it no longer had to, New York required its county jails to maintain a supply of legal reference materials, such as various chapters of New York State Consolidated Laws and case law digests.

But as times of plenty have faded, New York has decided that the law library is an unaffordable luxury. After finding that the mandate imposed a “significant cost upon each county,” New York’s prison commission is proposing to relax the regulation and allow county-run prisons to shutter their libraries.

The prisons would still be required to provide access to law materials — such as electronic or photocopying services — but they wouldn’t have to keep actual books on hand inside the facility, according to the regulatory notice posted in New York’s weekly register this week.

The state also wants to dispense with prison typewriters. The state notice states that “eliminating the requirement that facilities obtain and maintain typewriters will save the counties the costs associated therewith.”

The big news for the past several days is that the Supreme Court has finally gotten around to holding oral arguments on same-sex marriage. The bad news is that hundreds of people have been gathering day and night on the steps of the Supreme Court, holding placards and demanding something be done.

What exactly do they want done? Oral arguments are a charade. Not a single justice has not yet made up his mind on the matter. The arguments are only an occasion for the justices to show off their skills at rudeness. I cannot recall a time when any of the attorneys was able to get out three sentences without being interrupted. It is not unusual for interruptions to begin during the first sentence. The justices don’t want to hear what the presenters have to say; moreover, the presenters are given a limit time in which to make their pitch. The interruptions do not stop the clock. In a few months, the Court will hand down its decision on both the states’ laws and the federal one. That’s the time for people to show up singing and screaming. The only justice who has it right is Clarence Thomas because he alone never participates in the questioning. People think this is because he is too dumb to think of questions. Not so. Clarence is on record as saying that oral argument time is just a show that proves nothing. He is right.

Also overlooked is the fact that the gay rights people are absolutely crazy. What they want is to have the same rights as heterosexuals. Good grief! Is there anything worse than heterosexuality? I speak as an insider.

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Okay, here is something worse –newspaper articles about gay marriage. Read this one and weep: [From the Economist.]

“In June 2008 the Supreme Court of California overturned a gay-marriage ban, making it the second state (Massachusetts was first) to legalise such unions. Some 18,000 couples took the opportunity to get married before Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that banned gay marriage, won the support of 52% of the state’s voters at a referendum five months later.

But the passage of Prop 8 turned out to be just another step in a complex three-way jig between politicians, judges and campaigners. Gay-rights groups successfully challenged the law, first in a San Francisco district court and then on appeal. A stay was granted, meaning Prop 8 remained in force, as the case made its way through the judicial system; on March 26th it became the first gay-marriage case to reach the Supreme Court. (A second, on the Defence of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to married same-sex couples, was due to be heard on March 27th.)

Many of the 80 minutes the court devoted to Prop 8 were given over to procedural discussions of “standing”—the question of whether the proponents of the amendment had the right to argue their case in court. Californian officials have declined to defend it, so it has been left to ProtectMarriage.com, a pro-Prop 8 group, to make the case. (Similarly, Barack Obama’s administration will not advocate for DOMA; congressional Republicans will do so instead.) In 2011 California’s state Supreme Court granted standing to the Prop 8 backers. But some legal eagles have urged the Supreme Court to rule otherwise, and the justices appear receptive.

Some of the crowd who queued for five days to witness the hearing must have been disappointed by the focus on process. But to judge by their hand-wringing, when the justices issue their verdict in June it will not be a surprise if they reject the case on these grounds. (That would leave the district-court ruling overturning Prop 8 in force, although further legal challenges could follow.) Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote between the court’s liberal and conservative wings, seemed “deeply conflicted,” says Matt Coles of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lobby group. At one point the judge wondered if the court had erred in agreeing to hear the case at all.

If standing is granted, the justices then have several options. Most dramatic would be a ruling that all state bans on gay marriage contravene the equal-protection clause of the 14th amendment to the constitution. This “50-state solution” is sought by the Prop 8 plaintiffs and gay-rights groups, but it did not get much of an airing before the court.

Less sweeping would be the “nine-state solution”: to overturn bans in California and the other states (including Colorado, which recently passed a civil-union law) that recognise same-sex unions but fall short of marriage. This curious argument, proposed by the White House and presented in court by Donald Verrilli, the solicitor-general, was attacked by both wings of the court. The odds against it have lengthened.

The last option is a California-only verdict. The justices could uphold the appeals court’s ruling that to grant the right to marry only to withdraw it later is unlawful. That would overturn Prop 8 without implications for other states. Or they could uphold the will of California’s voters and leave the law in place. That would disappoint thousands of couples who hope to wed (although polls suggest that Prop 8 would soon be overturned at the ballot box anyway), but would provide solace to states that wish to preserve their bans.

Religiosity strongly predicts opposition to gay marriage: 84% of weekly churchgoers voted for Prop 8. But arguments based on faith, tradition or squeamishness cannot be adduced in court. This has forced advocates into awkward corners. It is in the state’s interest, Charles Cooper, lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com, told the Supreme Court, to keep marriage heterosexual in order to regulate procreation. “Nobody thinks that’s what marriage is about,” says Michael Klarman of Harvard Law School, “but that’s the argument they must make.”

What if the court were to rule expansively? Gay-marriage opponents warn of another Roe v Wade that cuts off debate and poisons politics for decades. Their foes cite Loving v Virginia, the 1967 case that overturned bans on interracial marriage without triggering much resentment. That seems the better comparison, and not only because it concerns marriage. Nearly half of Americans oppose gay marriage but more back it, and their numbers are growing quickly (see chart). Fully 64% think gay marriage is inevitable.

If not rights, then votes
It is not hard to see why: support among almost every demographic group is growing, and youngsters are the most liberal of all. Sniffing the political wind, last month many Republicans called on the justices to ditch Prop 8. Hillary Clinton has added her support. In the 2004 election cycle Republicans used gay marriage to whack Democrats; the reverse could happen in 2016.

The change in public opinion found political expression four times over last November. After a string of losses for campaigners Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to legalise gay marriage via the ballot box, and voters in Minnesota rejected a proposed ban. Legislatures in six other states and Washington, DC, have approved gay marriage. Several others, including Illinois and Minnesota, are debating bills; some could pass before the court’s ruling.

Both sides of the debate have found uses for this turnaround in fortunes. Six months ago defenders of “traditional marriage” were crowing about their electoral invincibility; they now say America is conducting a vigorous democratic debate that judges should allow to run its course. This argument may appeal to cautious justices.

As for gay-marriage campaigners, their successes have helped repair a split that emerged when the Prop 8 case was filed in 2009. Backers argued that marriage was a civil right that should not be held hostage to electoral whims. Others, fearing backlash from a premature court ruling, preferred a quieter approach, including state-by-state political campaigns.

The political track now looks more viable, but the growth in support that made election wins possible has also reduced fears of backlash. “The momentum on the ground makes people less concerned about whether we are before the court before we should be,” says Brian Moulton, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, a lobby group. The cause has been helped by ever-louder support from Mr Obama, who appears to see gay marriage as the great civil-rights struggle of the era.

If so, it is being waged for couples like Ms Healey and Ms Dávalos. They plan to marry if Prop 8 is scrapped, but without fanfare. “Marriage is much more serious than a ‘yippee-for-me’ day,” says Ms Healey. The importance of marriage, she adds, is the only thing her opponents get right.”

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If you read this article from beginning to end and didn’t skip anything, you deserve a coconut whip made by the loving hands of Jungle Jim himself.