Five days ago we received the news we knew was coming but didn’t want to hear: Senator John S. McCain III died of brain cancer. By any account Senator McCain stood for the best of what our nation stood for.

He was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 because his father, John S. McCain Jr, served there in his career in the Navy.

Because both is father and grandfather graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland it was assumed he would attend there also. He graduated in 1958, placing nearly at the bottom of his class.

Nobody would expect Lt. McCain to have much of a military career but he did. In 1967 he flew a mission during the War in Vietnam and was shot down and taken prisoner. His captors soon learned he was the son of a 4 Star Naval General and offered to send him home as a tactic to appear humane. Lt. McCain, in a phenomenal act of courage, refused their offer unless all the POW’s were released. In the 5 1/2 years between that offer and the end of the war he was tortured beyond what most of us can imagine. Because of this torture he spent the rest of his life not being able to raise his arms above his shoulders. He couldn’t even comb his hair.

He came home in 1973. After all he had been through we all could have understood if he had spent the rest of his life seeing this torture as an excuse for avoiding responsibility and blaming others.

But John McCain chose a different path. He didn’t blame his government for sending him to Vietnam, he didn’t blame his captors for their torture, he didn’t blame his country for the horrible treatment Vietnam veterans endured when they returned.

Instead he ran for Congress. In 1982 the good people of the 1st District of Arizona sent him to the House of Representatives and in 1986 the state of Arizona chose him to replace Senator Barry Goldwater as a Senator. He ran for President in 2000 and 2008, losing to George W. Bush and Barach Obama.

Senator McCain was a Republican and held different views on many issues. But those of us who found a different path to American greatness nevertheless respected him even if we didn’t agree with him. Patriotism does not depend on agreement as it much as it depends on love for our nation.

Fair winds and following seas.

I had plans to write today about the case of Loving v. Virginia. On this day in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that states do not have the right to prohibit marriages between people of different races. It’s called Loving v. Virginia because the plaintiff was Richard Loving (1933-1975). He sued the Commonwealth of Virginia to be allowed to marry Mildred Jeter (1939-2008). Richard was white and Mildred was black and several states (including Virginia) prohibited their marriage.

Because June 12th commemorates the day people of all races could marry the person they love, it’s become known as “Loving Day” and I wrote about this in 2008 and 2012.

Several times I’ve drawn the line from Loving v. Virginia to Obergefell v. Hodges which was decided last June. In 1967 the justices allowed a person to marry whom he loves even if that person belonged to a different race; last year the justices allowed a person to marry whom he loves even if that person is the same sex.

That’s the essay I was going to write until I woke up today and saw the headline that earlier this morning a man walked into the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and opened fire. By the time he was done, 50 were dead and 53 were wounded. The shooter was also dead.

Pulse is known as a gay club and the shooter recently made anti gay comments. It’s not a stretch to believe that the shooter chose this club because of his homophobia. The phrase “hate crime” finds no better home than this.

So how do we react? It’s not enough for us to call for an end to hate. We need to do more. These crimes continue, in no small part, because good people lack the courage to call out and condemn the hate we see and hear when we see and hear them. We live in a society that celebrates victimization and revenge, where it’s become fashionable to “take matters into our own hands” because “the government won’t protect us.”

From what we’ve learned in the last few hours, the shooter saw two men kissing each other a few weeks ago and became enraged. In his mind this gave him justification to engage in mass murder.

It didn’t. It’s not enough for the rest of us to not want to kill gay people. We need to embrace the fact that people like me (who married someone of the same race and different gender) don’t have the right to decide who is allowed to kiss or marry.

And it starts when people we know make racist or homophobic statements. We need to challenge them only because our silence falsely translates into consent. When the shooter made his homophobic comments I wish someone had called him out. I wish someone reminded him that people who offend him have the same right to love that he does.

And I wish that this Sunday morning had been another boring Sunday for 103 people in Orlando.

Saturday we received sad and unexpected news: Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep.

He leaves a clear legacy. He was nominated to the Court by President Reagan prompted by the retirement of Chief Justice Warren Burger (1907-1995). President Reagan nominated Justice William Rehnquist to fill the Chief Justice’s post. He then nominated Antonin Scalia to replace Rehnquist; Scalia was confirmed unanimously by the Senate on September 17, 1986.

In the nearly 30 years since his appointment virtually all of us learned a few things: his views consistently skewed conservative and his intellect was second to none. We view each other across a long political divide (ie, I’m as liberal as he is conservative) but we actually agreed on how we interpret the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among them is the case of Maryland v. King. This case, from 2012, questions whether law enforcement has the right to collect DNA through a cheek swab from someone who has been arrested (but not convicted). He and I believe this constitutes an unfair search and seizure and violates the fourth amendment.

That said, we have different philosophies on the Constitution. He considered himself an “originalist.” That means he believes that in interpreting the Constitution we should look only toward the intent of those who wrote the document.

I respect that, but I hold more to the philosophy of Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974) who felt that the Constitution was a “living, breathing document.” Earl and I hold that our basic understandings of truth, morality, and how treat each other, develop over time. Just as our understanding develops, so should our interpretation of the Constitution.

My best example lies in Justice Warren’s flagship decision: Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954 the Court held that schools could no longer segregate students by race. It overturned the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson that allowed “separate but equal” segregation.

Originalist arguments must hold that the Court has no right to demand integration because the authors of the Constitution included slave owners and likely none of them would have held that the races are equal. None of them would have supported a decision that virtually all of us find necessary.

I argue for the “living breathing” interpretation because I value progress. I pray that whoever claims Justice Scalia’s seat also looks to progress.

That said, I was saddened but not surprised by the immediate response of the Senate Republicans. Seemingly before the mortuary arrived to pick up Justice Scalia, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that President Obama “had better not” nominate Justice Scalia’s successor because the “American people” should have a say in his successor.

He is delusional on several fronts. He claims that since President Obama’s Presidency is in its last year he is a “lame duck” and shouldn’t nominate anyone. This ignores the fact that President Reagan nominated Justice Anthony Kennedy who was confirmed in the last year of his administration. Furthermore, our Constitution claims nowhere that there are conditions on the President’s ability to nominate a justice. There is no “lame duck” exception.

Finally, and this runs through both terms in the Obama Presidency, the Republican leadership refuses to play by the rules. According to the Constitution the Senate is responsible for providing “advice and consent” of Court nominees. Mitch McConnell, et al, have announced that they will not fulfill their responsibilities.

Simply put, they are in contempt of the Constitution.