30 June—Die Nacht der langen Messer, known in English as the Night of the Long Knives and the Röhm purge, a series of political executions not authorized by courts—and therefore just plain murders—ordered by Nazi autocrat Adolf Hitler at the urging of Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, was a three-day killing spree that started on this day in 1934. In simple terms, it was intended to consolidate Hitler’s power and was spun as a preventive measure against an alleged planned coup by his good friend and loyal supporter Ernst Röhm’s paramilitary Brownshirts. The mass murders were carried out by Himmler’s SS (Schutzstaffel) and its SD (Sicherheitsdienst) security service and Gestapo, as well as Göring’s personal police.

It’s doubtful that Röhm was actually planning a coup or anything like it. But tyrants tend to suffer from paranoia (for good reason, to be sure) and Hitler was thus receptive to the false evidence Himmler and Göring crafted to get him going.

Fifty-two years later, in 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled five to four that a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults was constitutional. The Georgia law didn’t distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual sodomy, but this case was about the homosexual sodomy. Incredible as it may seem today, that absurd, reprehensible ruling was made only 39 years ago. On the other hand, Trump regressives as well as two pre-Trump corrupt current Supreme Court justices would like to take the country back to a vile dystopia.

Happily and sensibly, in a six-to-three decision in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supremes reversed Bowers, effectively reaffirming yet again the implicit constitutional right to privacy as well as personal autonomy to define one’s own relationships and non-interference with private sexual activities between consenting adults. This was a pretty new and fresh SCOTUS. But O’Connor saw the light and switched to let ’em do it, while Rehnquist, now elevated to Chief, didn’t and was joined by Thomas and Scalia who hadn’t been on the Bowers court. No surprise there. So what can be done about Thomas? And Alito, while we’re at it . . .