By Shawn Carter

“Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.”

Invictus, by William Ernest Henley

Yesterday, as we celebrated another long-overdue affirmation of our LGBTQIA+ brothers, sisters, friends, loved ones and co-workers, the Pittsburgh Comet dares to take this moment to show our appreciation for a Supreme Court supermajority who got one right, but, just as we did seven years ago, continue to draw attention to what the high Court got wrong, what it consistently gets wrong, and why we have so much work left to do.

Most of us, if we’re intellectually honest, saw the Supreme Court’s 32-page opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, as something of a no-brainer. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, an arch-conservative Trump appointee and member of the Federalist Society, managed to sum up the obvious in the first sentence of the third paragraph of the opinion:  Continue reading →