From Friday's
New York Times, on Supreme Court nominee Samuel
Alito:
David J. Stoll, the former Alito clerk who now works with Lambda Legal, said that like Justice O'Connor, Judge Alito would not bring any ideological agenda to cases. "I think he is fantastic," Mr. Stoll said.
I was skeptical at first, but the more I learn about him, the more I like him.
Update: Oh, never
mind. Foolish me, actually believing something I read
in the Times!
Recently I was given a copy of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy by Peter Schweizer. It's a swift read that exposes many accounts of liberal arrogance. In one chapter Schweizer looks at left-wing talk show host (and former Saturday Night Live head writer) Al Franken, who in the past didn't shy away from expressing his contempt toward gays.
Schweizer notes that Franken, while attending Harvard, had a
skit rejected by that school's famed Hasting Pudding Club. Later,
while writing for SNL in 1976, Franken was
interviewed by the Harvard Crimson, which related the
following:
He recalled writing a skit called "Seamen on Broadway" that was rejected from the Hasty Pudding show "by some preppie so they could take some other preppie's skit." Franken started to smile again, but his tone was serious, too serious. "It's not preppies, cause I'm a preppie myself. I just don't like homosexuals. If you ask me, they're all homosexuals in the Pudding. Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia." The smile became so broad it pushed his eyes shut. He couldn't stand it any longer. "Put that in, put that in," Franken laughed, leaning over the desk. "I'd love to see that in The Crimson."
Gay Patriot has already picked up on this. I'll add that it was always pretty clear that Franken's SNL Stuart Smalley character (based on the real host of a New York City public access show) was brimming with contempt for effeminate gays. Franken has always, it now seems, been a hater.
More: Reader Curtis comments: "I don't know how anyone could read Franken's words and then defend his joking gleefully about a gay-bashing death (or so it certainly seems) as just his being 'ironic.' I was in college in 1976, and the campus leftists were very hostile toward gays. It wasn't until the '80s that gay leftists ingratiated themselves with the larger left, which decided all those gay foot soldiers could be useful."
That rings true to me, too.
And while I'm linking to Gay Patriot, he also has a nice
posting on the foolish politics of gay activists who portray
(literally!) George Bush as Adolf Hitler.
The victory of the Democrat in Virginia's governor's race will be seen as aiding moderate Southerners within the party, including that state's outgoing governor, presidential hopeful Mark Warner. Unfortunately, these Democrats are "moderates" not in terms of taxes and spending, but with regards to opposing civil unions and gay adoption. But the Washington Post misses that angle.
In California, moderate Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who opposes gay marriage unless voter-approved but supports civil unions and gay adoption) was further weakened by his state's rejection of measures he backed to cap state spending and strip partisan lawmakers of their redistricting powers. Too bad.
As expected, Texas voters overwhelmingly approved, 76% to 24%, one of the nation's most sweeping constitutional bans on same-sex marriage (or anything remotely similar). That makes the Lone Star State the 19th to write anti-gay marriage prohibitions into its constitution. No anti-gay marriage initiative has yet failed to easily pass in a popular vote. In Maine, however, voters did reject a proposal to repeal the state's new gay-anti-discrimination law.
More: Tim Hulsey
blogs on the Virginia governor's election, noting that winning
Democrat Tim Kaine:
wore his Catholic religion on his sleeve, making sure to "out-Jesus" [Republican Jerry] Kilgore at every opportunity. He made a point of supporting an anti-Gay marriage amendment pending in next year's Virginia General Assembly (even though he has voiced his support for Gay-rights issues in the past). His campaign even engaged in some not-too-subtle Gay-baiting of the noticeably effeminate Kilgore.
On that last matter, there's more here.
So, is this the winning Democratic strategy? If Kaine's mentor, outgoing Gov. Mark Warner, bests Hillary for the Democratic presidential nod, will gay groups give him the same unconditional support they lavished on Kerry/Edwards even as the latter supported state amendments banning gay marriage?
You know the answer.
Dale Carpenter's guest blogging on same-sex marriage at volokh.com is done. Here are his concluding thoughts.
Jamie Kirchick has
a column in this week's InNewsweekly that calls on American
(and gay) supporters of the Palestinian cause to press for a
rejection of extreme homophobia.
Law professor Stephen Clark provides
another look at why constitutional decisions voiding
anti-"sodomy" laws (Lawrence) and voiding anti-abortion
restrictions (Roe) "aren't conjoined twins." He
argues:
Lawrence is the considerably stronger of the two and is less likely to be threatened by any separation. Pro-choice advocates have far more to gain from associating Roe with Lawrence than gay-rights advocates have to gain from associating Lawrence with Roe. Conflating the two may put Lawrence at unnecessary risk.
But failure to pledge fealty to Roe was a key reason why leading gay groups such as NGLTF and HRC condemned John Roberts, and NGLTF has already condemned Samuel Alito. No, abortion is no longer always stated up front, but it's there, lurking in the "penumbra" and "emanations" of the language about "far right extremism."
Further: Here's more in the way of
constructive criticism on the failed tactics of groups such as
HRC, from Washington Blade editor Chris Crain. He notes, for
instance:
Last year, when Laura Bush was pressed by the media on whether she supported her husband's constitutional ban on gay marriage, her innocuous answer was that the issue was "something people should talk about and debate." Rather than welcome the invitation, HRC's then-leader Cheryl Jacques released a letter criticizing the first lady, saying there were more important issues-like the economy!-for Americans to discuss.
Sad, but all too typical, and still ongoing.
I live in Virginia. In Tuesday's gubernatorial election, the option is to vote for the Democrats/Republicans (pick one) because they're less awful than the Republicans/Democrats (pick one).
Both major party candidates for governor not only oppose gay marriage, but favor keeping adoption by gay couples illegal, although the Republican opposes gay marriage/adoption more adamantly. On the other hand, Virginia's Democratic governors always push through big tax hikes in our already extraordinarily high state tax rates in order to grow government and increase their party's base (and, more generally, government's tentacles).
I don't think self-branded gay advocacy groups, who raise money with the promise to advance gay equality, should consider non-gay issues in making electoral endorsements. But I do think private individual voters who are gay can and should consider other issues relating to the well being and prosperity of the commonwealth. My decision, in this election, is not to vote for either the Democrat or the Republican.
More: Here's an example of the political problem: Our state's outgoing Democratic governor, Mark Warner, opposed a bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature (with bipartisan support) that not only banned anything approaching civil unions, but any legal arrangements that might bestow marriage-associated rights on gay couples.
Although Warner tried unsuccessfully to strip out the
most-offensive contract-banning parts of the bill (while supporting
the civil union and marriage ban), he nevertheless decided not to
spend political capital on vetoing the full measure when it crossed
his desk. A veto probably would have been overturned; still, it
would have been a strong statement on behalf of legal equality by a
popular governor not up for re-election. But gay votes for
Democrats come with no price tag, so why bother?
More Recent Postings
10/30/05 - 11/5/05
The homepage of the Human Rights Campaign prominently features a photo of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, which links to HRC's rather dismissive assessment ("The Alito Record-Negatives for Gay and Transgender Americans"). [Editor's note: modified since originally posted.]
But interestingly, if you follow the press release links you find Alito's 1971 Gay Support Raises Hope, citing this AP story.
Is HRC of two minds? Or perhaps the big homepage-linked item is
red meat for the membership while the press release is meant to
help divide Alito from his conservative backers, which would
explain
this pickup of HRC's release by the religious right's CNS News.
Or maybe I'm just being churlish.
In New York City's mayoral race, liberal Democrat Fernando
Ferrer is running
this ad against moderate Republican Mike Bloomberg. Here's
an
explanation from SteveSilver.net (hat tip:
andrewsullivan.com.)
IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter guest blogs at The Volokh Conspiracy on same-sex marriage. This site is very popular with smart conservatives, so kudos to Dale.
By the way, Dale's posting was in response to an earlier,
anti-gay marriage piece by the dreadful Maggie Gallagher.
Libertarian Cathy Young has more to say about Gallagher and the
debate over at Volokh,
here.
First take on Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court: he's no John Roberts, unfortunately. The Advocate says that in 2001 he authored a decision that declared unconstitutional a public school district policy that prohibited harassment against students because of their sexual orientation or other factors. If we must force students into these government/educrate mis-run, taxpayer-money down-the-rathole monstrosities (known as "public education"), you'd think that policies prohibiting the bullying of gay kids, even if mostly ineffectual, would be a small positive. But noooo.
This may provide a misleading picture, or it may be an accurate indicator of who Alito is. We'll see. Harriet Miers, you're looking better and better!
Update: Some informative comments. I'm not
taking a position at this point, but I do note that some civil
libertarians believe the harassment policy Alito struck down was
overly broad. He wrote in Saxe v. State
College Area School District:
There is no categorical 'harassment exception' to the First Amendment's free speech clause....When laws against harassment attempt to regulate oral or written expression on such topics, however detestable the views expressed may be, we cannot turn a blind eye to the First Amendment implications.
It's also been noted that in another case, Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S., Alito helped reverse a district court in order to uphold the claim of a student regularly called names such as "faggot," "gay," and "homo" that he was not afforded appropriate protection from harassment.
I'm not sure what to think, but I'm not accepting the activists'
charges without further evidence. So onward to the hearings!
--Stephen H. Miller