Opinion: In today’s pages: SAG, same-sex marriage, and a sea of plastic poison
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Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino asks whether a constitutional ban would nullify same-sex marriages already on the books:
...I believe the amendment would void the marriages. For the same-sex marriages to survive, freedom-to-marry advocates would have to win at least one of two arguments in the courts. Both arguments would rest on the unfairness of applying the reinstated ban retroactively, but both would probably fail.
Human Rights Watch researcher Sarah Tofte says a backlog in testing rape kids in L.A. means many crime victims are still waiting for answers. And writer Margaux Wexberg Sanchez describes the journey of two men to call attention to the 100 million tons of plastic junk in the world’s oceans.
The editorial board laments the prevalence of counterfeit malaria medicine in Africa, wonders if it’s time for a fireworks ban, and hopes SAG won’t strike:
Even if they managed to kill the AFTRA agreement, SAG’s leaders would still have to persuade the studios to make concessions that the writers couldn’t win after a 100-day strike -- a hiatus that cost many writers more in lost pay than they gained from the eventual deal. No matter how much leverage it has on July 9, SAG is unlikely to break the pattern established by the previous deals without putting everyone who works in and around the industry through considerably more pain.
On the letters page, readers discuss the Supreme Court ruling against executing child rapists. Kathleen Brown of Santa Clarita says, ‘Those whose loved ones are victims of violent crime might garner the wisdom in Coretta Scott King’s words: ‘Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.’’
*Art by Anthony Russo