While the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has reiterated
its "adamant opposition" to the confirmation of Judge Alito, its
latest statement
contains some welcomed balance:
Judge Alito, addressing a case brought by students seeking to protect their right to express anti-gay views, for which he received an award from the Family Research Council, explained his vote against the constitutionality of an extraordinarily broad school anti-harassment policy as required by the controlling constitutional standard, a view we share, and offered up his ruling in another case where he voted to allow a student thought to be gay to transfer to another school because the "student had been bullied unmercifully...to the point of attempting...suicide" as an example of favoring "the small person." (emphasis added)
Recognizing that Saxe v. State College Area School District was not an anti-gay ruling but a pro-free-speech ruling, and that Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S. was a gay-friendly ruling, distinguishes NGLTF from the ridiculously partisan position taken by the Democratic Party lobbyists who now run PFLAG. As noted previously, that formerly nonpartisan group issued a statement condemning Alito's free-speech ruling in Saxe while making no mention at all of Shore Regional.
More: Assessing the Alito hearings panderfest,
Paul Horowitz of Prawfsblog
writes:
I appreciate the value that interest groups such as NOW and NARAL have to the Democrats in the political process, but if I were running the party I would be seeking a Sister Souljah moment with those groups at least once a week, or better yet ignoring them altogether.
And then, if the Republicans would only ignore the Family
Research Council and Focus on the Family!
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