We Must Honor RBG By Continuing To Fight Her Battles
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is resting. But we must not rest.
I, like so many other Americans, am heartbroken by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, affectionately nicknamed ‘Notorious RBG” by her many fervent admirers. Her absence feels like a hollowness inside of me.
It’s difficult to summarize how much she meant to us. To women. To gay people. To anyone victimized by the conservative rule of the United States.
RBG was a feminist champion. In the 1970s, as a civil rights lawyer, she won five feminist cases before the Supreme Court. When she was appointed as a Justice in 1993, she continued to fight for women, ending all-male universities in 1996. Famously, when asked how many women should be on the Supreme Court for her to be satisfied, she remarked, without hesitation: nine.
She also crusaded for LGBTQ equality. Her early decisions to allow sodomy in 2003 and ban the homophobic Amendment 2 in 1996 began the journey towards LGBTQ acceptance (a journey we are still on). Without her crucial vote in 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, I would not have the right to marry in the United States. I will forever be grateful to her.
The majority of Americans have been positively impacted by Justice Ginsburg’s arguments. She protected immigrant…