"Reading Justice Gorsuch’s Bostock opinion, I was thrown back to the summer of 2017, when I found myself in a social gathering of a half dozen fellow progressives and one prominent conservative lawyer..."

"... with whom we were all friendly. It was a civil but increasingly pointed conversation as we pressed the lawyer, first gently and then more firmly, on whether he actually supported the Muslim travel ban and other actions of the Trump administration’s opening months that troubled the rest of us. He took the bait in good humor but finally, all but throwing up his hands, he cut the conversation off. 'Look,' he said. 'We got Gorsuch.' Yes, we did."

Writes Linda Greenhouse in "What Does ‘Sex’ Mean? The Supreme Court Answers/We’ll soon find out whether the court inflames the culture wars or cools them as its term winds down" (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there:

Forgive my cynicism, but I suspect that Roberts, being acutely aware of how politically biased his court appears, decided to select this case as a means of deflecting attention from the flood of conservative opinions yet to come. Having determined that they already lost the culture war on LGBT equality, they tossed progressives this bone, fully prepared to nullify it with a decision that it can be ignored by people with "sincerely held beliefs." They will point to this case as evidence of their neutrality.

At the Pre-Dawn Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

The photo was taken at 5:10 a.m. today, the 8th of the 10 days when the sun rises at 5:17, the earliest sunrise time of the year.

And please remember to use the Althouse Portal when you need to do some Amazon shopping. I really appreciate your support for this blog.

"Unlike many artists who reacted to the pandemic with a kind of dutiful tenderness—'Let me help with my song!'—Dylan has decided not to offer comfort, nor to hint at some vague solidarity."

"Lyrically, he’s either cracking weird jokes ('I’ll take the "Scarface" Pacino and the "Godfather" Brando / Mix ’em up in a tank and get a robot commando') or operating in a cold, disdainful, it-ain’t-me-babe mode.... Dylan is a voracious student of United States history—he can, and often does, itemize the various atrocities that have been committed in service to country—and 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' could be understood as a glib summation of America’s outlaw origins, and of the confused, dangerous, and often haphazard way that we preserve democracy. He seems to understand instinctively that American history is not a series of fixed points but an unmoored and constantly evolving idea that needs to be reëstablished each day—things don’t happen once and then stop happening. In this sense, linear time becomes an invention; every moment is this moment.... [F]or me, Dylan’s vast and intersectional understanding of the American mythos feels so plainly and uniquely relevant to the grimness and magnitude of these past few months. As the country attempts to metabolize the murder of George Floyd, it is also attempting to reckon with every crooked, brutal, odious, or unjust murder of a black person—to understand a cycle that began centuries ago and somehow continues apace. What is American racism? It’s everything, Dylan insists. Indiana Jones and J.F.K. and Elvis Presley and Jimmy Reed—nothing exists without the rest of it. None of us are absolved, and none of us are spared."

You can tell by the diaeresis in "reëstablished" that it's The New Yorker. Amanda Petrusich reviews Bob Dylan's new album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways," which will be released on Friday.

Petrusich sure is putting a lot of her own clunky words into Bob Dylan's mouth. She's insisting that he's insisting — insisting that everything is American racism. Why would you go and assume that what he's saying is what you're fired up to think everybody is supposed to be saying right now?

She did say "for me." You can listen to whatever you want any way you want.