Whenever a president has the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice, the first question asked by most sane people in this world is, “What are their legal qualifications? Do they have the necessary legal experience and expertise to sit on the nation’s highest court?”
Then there are the other people, like those at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, who do not worry about such things and instead ask such things as: “Are (or were) you a practicing homosexual?”:
The popular mantra — even among conservatives — is that Kagan’s sexuality is ‘irrelevant.’ But a Justice Kagan would help decide some critically important constitutional issues dealing with: homosexual ‘marriage’ as a supposed civil right; religious liberty and freedom of conscience; and the First Amendment as applied to citizens’ right to oppose homosexuality. So it certainly matters if she, as a lifetime judge, could emerge as a crusading (openly) ‘gay’ advocate on the court.
First off, the “popular mantra” is correct — a SCOTUS nominee’s sexual orientation is completely irrelevant. Who Elena Kagan sleeps with or doesn’t sleep with has nothing to do with how she may or may not view the law. They may be a minority within a minority, but there are plenty of conservative gay and lesbian people — and also many wildly liberal gay and lesbian people — who don’t support marriage rights for gays and lesbians and who hold other opinions that may not fit the stereotype of a “liberal” gay or lesbian. Simply because one is gay or lesbian does not automatically make one a “crusader” for gay rights. The gay and lesbian community is just as diverse on moral and political issues as the public at large. We are not monolithic and this is the mistake AFTAH and their cohorts make.
Focus on the Family, which previously signaled it would not support gay nominees because they lack the necessary “character” and “moral rectitude,” today opposes Kagan because of her “her emotional and legal commitment to the LGBT agenda.” And the American Family Association demands that the media ask Kagan if she’s a lesbian, because “no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.”
Is Kagan a lesbian? The White House says no, but that hasn’t stopped her conservative detractors. I don’t know and I don’t care. I find it sad that society judges all older unmarried people, men or women, as gay because they either chose to pursue careers over families, or simply never met that special someone. It’s unfair to Kagan and it’s unfair to the country. All it really means is that we’re once again going to be subjected to another punishing and brutal confirmation process.
