All-Male Social Clubs Verboten. A Senate panel has approved the nomination of Circuit Court nominee Judge D. Brooks Smith, with three Democrats defying their colleagues" contention that the candidate be defeated because he was a member of an all-male rod-and-gun club. I don't know a thing about Judge Smith, although he did receive the highest rating -- "well qualified" -- from the liberal American Bar Association, but reading the attacks on him for belonging to a men's club makes me red with anger. The club in question, it should be noted, was not some fancy country club with swimming pool or golf course or tennis courts. No, just a club house. And a group of guys who wanted to associate together in an all-male environment.
But no, that's too much freedom of association for the ever-more revolting Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and committee chairperson. Turns out Judge Smith actually resigned from the odious all-male association, just not fast enough for inquisitor Leahy, who declared Smith "should have resigned from the "country club" -- when he first told the committee of his membership. Judge Smith also said he would resign but did not do so until 1999." For shame! Bellowed Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, "No one should be on the court if they give the slightest [hint] of discrimination." Chimed in Sen. Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, Judge Smith "has not demonstrated good judgment on certain ethical issues" and is "plagued by an ethical cloud."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, responded:
Given the bipartisan support Judge Smith enjoys from the people who know him best, and his stellar record, I find it most difficult to accept that the opposition to him has centered on his belonging to an all-male, family-oriented fishing club where his father first taught him to fly fish."
Hatch warned that "if this is the kind of thing that this committee uses as an excuse for thwarting the president's judicial nominations, then the American people will have a big laugh at our expense, and rightly so." If only it were so. But the right of men to associate socially with men has now been cast as an offense akin to racial exclusion (women's clubs, on the other hand, get a free pass). Any gay man who supports these smug political clowns should be forced to cruise a co-gender sex club!
Scholarly Fundies? The Regent University Law
Review (yes, Pat Robertson's own Regent University publishes a law
review!) has devoted its Spring 2002 issue to what it calls "a
series of scholarly discussions of homosexuality." According to
comments
by Lou Sheldon posted on the Web site of the Traditional Values
Coalition (kindred spirits of Robertson), one article looks at "The
Selling of Homosexuality to America," by a Regent University
doctoral student (yes, Regent University has doctoral students!).
It describes:
a carefully designed marketing strategy developed by homosexual activists more than 15 years ago. The key marketers in this campaign to normalize homosexuality are Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, authors of the 1989 book "After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear & hatred of Gays in the "90s."
"After the Ball" has been the marketing strategy book used by homosexual activists in government, in the media, and in other power centers.
I vaguely remember this book from my years as a GLAAD committee chair in New York (before being pushed out for raising objections to the group's unctuous political correctness). I recall that "After the Ball" did make a good case for a mainstream gay rights movement that focused on placing the normality of our lives before the American public -- and using professional PR strategies to accomplish this. But the book didn't generate much buzz among the lefty lesbigay activists at the helm of "the movement" and certainly was never adopted as any kind of a blueprint. Today it's all but forgotten. To suggest that this book is and has been driving a "gay agenda" is bizarre to say the least. How gullible are these people?
Follow Up. F. Brian Chase, an attorney and
friend of IGF, writes:
I used to work for a group in Florida that followed Hunter & Madsen and even published some of their proposed ads. The group was uniformly criticized by the other gay rights groups in the area for not being inclusive enough and for trying to sanitize gay life to suit hetero tastes. As I recall, Hunter & Madsen were viewed as sell-outs by most of the GLBT etc. groups of the day.
Oh well it's still worth reading that press release thing just for the laugh value of seeing "scholarly" and "Regent University" used in the same sentence.
Yes, indeed!