Actor Samuel Jackson slammed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Clarence” for jeopardizing the legal right to interracial marriage with the court’s decision Friday to overturn of Roe v. Wade.
The same rationale the conservative court employed to reverse the 1973 decision on abortion rights could now be used to eliminate the right to same-sex marriage, contraception and interracial marriage, which was protected in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling, lawmakers and scholars fear.
Jackson bashed Thomas as “Uncle Clarence” in a Friday night tweet, referring to the excessively servile Black character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s pre-Civil War novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The Roe decision suggested that the legal underpinnings of the constitutional protection for abortion were weakly based on arguments that have supported other Supreme Court cases guaranteeing various rights, including the right to contraception and same-sex and interracial marriage.
In a solo concurring opinion Friday, Thomas suggested that the court should “correct the error” by withdrawing granted rights now protected under the “substantive due process clause” of the 14th Amendment.
But Thomas specifically named only the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception. He side-stepped the Loving case, which, if overturned as Roe was, could threaten his own interracial marriage to Ginni Thomas.
Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff behind the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, said Friday that Thomas omitted Loving v. Virginia on his list of top court decisions to “reconsider” because it “affects him personally.”
That “affects him personally, but he doesn’t care about the LGBTQ+ community,” Obergefell said on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out.”
Though some Thomas supporters criticized Jackson for what they called a “racist” attack on the justice, the actor’s Twitter followers mostly applauded the dig — and the issue:
More on the Supreme Court abortion ruling:
- Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, dismantling decades-old precedent
- Roe overturned: The fight begins
- Abortion is now illegal in these states
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “We have to fill the streets”
- Clarence Thomas: Cases protecting gay marriage and contraception should be next
- Republicans make it clear they want to ban abortion nationwide
- Here’s how the world is reacting to the end of Roe
- Pro-abortion rights protesters attacked and threatened
- Donations, chants and calls for change: Celebrities react to end of Roe
- SCOTUS decision threatens right to interracial marriage, experts warn
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