This story on legal battles against the military's don't ask, don't tell policy suggests how important the next Supreme Court justice will be for hot-button gay issues. The Pentagon wants the challenges dismissed, saying that the Supreme Court's Lawrence ruling nullifying sodomy laws has no bearing on the case because the dismissed service members "could have abstain from sexual activity and not reveal their sexuality." The plaintiffs maintain that the current policy denied them the right of privacy, equal protection of the law and freedom of speech.
In Lawrence, the majority ruled that sodomy laws were an unconstitutional violation of privacy for gays and straights alike, while Justice O'Connor's concurring decision ruled against same-sex sodomy statutes as a violation of equal protection under the law for gays. As I've said before and others have reiterated in their comments on my earlier post about O'Connor, her take (though not embraced by the majority) remains by far the more valuable in fighting legal double-standards on marriage, the military, and other areas of state-sponsored discrimination.
Whether her replacement is a fair-minded, small government
conservative like O'Connor, or a flaming bigot like Scalia, will
make a huge difference in our lives for many years to come. Bush's
assertion that abortion and gay marriage won't be "litmus test"
issues offers at least some room for hope.