The Problem with Justice Thomas’s Dignity Argument

Justice Thomas, in his fervent dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate same-sex marriage bans, has some interesting things to say about the concept of dignity. His view of human dignity is that it is innate and therefore inalienable: “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them.”

The punchline, of course, is that the majority’s reasoning, which relies heavily on a Constitutional reading that sees dignity at the heart of liberty and the Due Process Clause, is flawed – gays and lesbians are not deprived of dignity (and therefore liberty) by their inability to marry, because “the government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.” Essentially, Justice Thomas says, as long as the state leaves me alone, my liberty and dignity are intact.

Justice Thomas’s invocation of slavery and internment to illustrate his qualms about the dignity argument arguably undermines the moral force of his point. Moreover, it rests on a narrow and theoretical concept of dignity.  

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Wisconsin Assembly Responds to “Child Exchange”

Adoption is intended to create lifelong parent-child relationships, and irrevocable parental obligations, no matter the challenges the newly-formed family might face in integrating an adopted son or daughter. However, in a tragic number of cases, parents decide not to keep the adopted child. Perhaps the highest-profile failed adoption in recent years was that of Artyem Savaliev/Justin Hansen, a seven year old Russian adoptee who in 2010 was put on a flight to Moscow by his Tennessee adoptive mother with a note explaining why she no longer wanted him. The case sparked concern and outrage in both Russia and the US.

Post-adoption family breakdowns are occurring in other less visible ways, including in Wisconsin. Last fall, Reuters published a five-part expose on “private re-homing,” a euphemistic term for advertising one’s unwanted adopted children on the Internet in order to find them a new home. This allows the parents of international and domestic adoptees to effectively, and beyond the supervision of child safety networks, pass off their parental obligations to strangers.

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