Queering Justice Thomas: Theories of Dignity in Obergefell

Abstract

The discourse of dignity constitutes one of the battlegrounds in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision imposing marriage equality. Whereas Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion celebrates the dignity of the institution of marriage, Justice Thomas’s dissent situates dignity outside of the purview of the state. I argue that a queer reading of Obergefell as response to the systemic racism in the US requires the theoretical position implied in Thomas’s view by mobilizing first a Kantian distinction between active citizens, passive citizens, and “savage” ungoverned bodies, and second Judith Butler’s politics of vulnerability.